The highest-ranking woman in the Philadelphia Fire Department has never battled a blaze.
Then again, how many firefighters studied at the London School of Economics or have a photographic memory or saved a runner's life at the Philadelphia Marathon?
Meet Diane Schweizer, first female chief in the history of the department, founded in 1736.
"I never had an interest in being a firefighter," says Schweizer, 39, who joined the department as a paramedic in 1995. "I didn't feel a passion for it."
One month into her tenure as chief of Emergency Medical Services Operations, Schweizer oversees the city's 300-plus paramedics and 45 ambulances.
It's a brain-busting assignment, requiring the technical skills of an air traffic controller and the temperament of a family therapist.
Like other large urban areas, Philadelphia's demand for paramedics far outweighs that for firefighters. Accidents, heart attacks, shootings and stabbings are on the rise; raging infernos are down.
As of last week, EMS had made 206,732 medical runs, compared with fire's 48,592, according to figures supplied by the department. Last year, it was 214,404 to 53,463.
Meanwhile, the EMS Division came under blistering attack in a yearlong performance audit by city controller Alan Butkovitz released Thursday.
The report said that EMS personnel were taking too long to arrive at accident scenes and that the department didn't have enough ambulances. Schweizer says she doesn't have permission to comment on the audit.
"We don't really fight fires anymore," she says. "Even most of the fire engines are going out on medical runs."
Schweizer, an emergency medical technician since she was a high schooler in Whippany, N.J., made an impressive medical run herself at the Philadelphia Marathon last month.
After a marathoner collapsed on Kelly Drive near the Art Museum, Schweizer, on patrol there, was summoned for help by the crowd.
When she got to the fallen runner, a man in his early 40s, "he was blue. Unconscious. Not breathing. No pulse," Schweizer says calmly, as though reciting a grocery list.
She immediately started chest compressions as an onlooker continued mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. When the medic unit arrived a few minutes later, the man was breathing on his own.
Schweizer's first "save" as chief. Sweet.
