Romona Walters has always wanted to be a teacher. Kids in preschool, maybe. It's a career that fits her interest in public service, she says.
But about a year ago, another possibility opened up. Now, the 20-year-old has a new goal as she continues her classes at Capital Community College: to become the first female fire chief in Hartford.
Her interest was piqued when she saw department notices looking for fire cadets — and when she saw female Hartford firefighters helping drum up interest in a field she previously thought was closed to women.
She couldn't have picked a better place in Connecticut to start.
Of Hartford's 301 firefighters, 15 are female. At 5 percent, that's the highest concentration of female firefighters among the state's big-city departments, including New Haven, Bridgeport and Stamford, according to data from those municipalities.