Inspired by the heroism of the rescue workers who responded when the planes hit the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, Kerry Ann Mansueto set out 15 years ago to become the first female career firefighter in Carteret.
When the terrorists attacked, Mansueto was attending a meeting at the World Trade Center as a marketing director contracted with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. She escaped, but several of her colleagues died.
But she says her dream quickly became a nightmare: Seven years of relentless harassment and hostility from male colleagues in a Carteret firehouse. Unwanted sexual advances. A texted photo of male genitalia. And then something even more alarming -- a firecall in 2010 when, she says, her fellow crewmen abandoned her in a burning building.