Jessica Johnson: Fighting fires helped 'wild girl' develop confidence, find self

E-mail this article Print this article

Johnson, 19, had phoned her Monday night to say her firefighting squad was heading to Twisp on Tuesday morning. Saying she had to get a good night's sleep, she promised to call Miller the next day.

But it wasn't Johnson who called early yesterday. It was Johnson's mother, Jodie Gray, phoning to tell her - before she heard it on the news - that her best friend and roommate was killed in a wildfire that took the lives of four firefighters.

"I'll miss living with her and going out with her at night, and walking to class with her; everything," Miller said of her roommate at Central Washington University. "She was a wild girl."

In a way, fighting fires seemed to tame the wild girl. Her swim coach from Yakima's West Valley High School, where she graduated in 1999, said she lacked focus and was "a challenge to coach at times" in her freshman year and early in her sophomore year.

Then she found firefighting.

"She was wild and outgoing and if she disagreed with you, you knew it," said coach Holly Dunham-Wheeler. "But then she started firefighting, and she really grew up. She found herself, she found confidence, and it made her feel good."

Tall and muscular with long blond hair and a vivacious smile, Johnson was known for "eating her daily square meals with five fruits and vegetables," Miller says, laughing. She worked out constantly at athletic clubs in Yakima and Ellensburg.

Despite living in Ellensburg, Johnson would drive home to Yakima on weekends to see her mother and to volunteer for the West Valley Fire Department.

Johnson got hooked on firefighting in 1998, when she joined a rookies' firefighting program taught by veteran firefighters from Central and Eastern Washington. Students - several are from West Valley High, where the sessions are held - are trained on weekends and at night.

With three years' experience fighting wildfires, Johnson was "prepared and good and safe enough to fight any wildfire," said Dave Leitch, deputy chief at the West Valley Fire Department. "She was physically strong, she could spin circles around the guys. She could also hang with them like one of the guys, too. She blended right in from the beginning."

Her boyfriend of two years, Nathan Craig, is also a firefighter.

Johnson wanted to be a dietitian and planned to keep firefighting in her free time, Miller said. Best friends since their freshmen year in high school, Miller, 20, also fought fires with Johnson and quit only this year to focus on competitive swimming.

Miller, Craig and several other friends of Johnson's spent yesterday with Johnson's mother, who, said Miller, was "hanging in there, like all of us."