Lesbian outgoing San Francisco Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson said she is stepping aside amid health matters at a noontime news conference August 14 intended to highlight her trailblazing career.
"I'm retiring because I have some health issues and that's all I'll say about it," she said in the Fire Commission meeting room at the San Francisco Fire Department headquarters on 2nd Street.
Later, in a media scrum outside, she elaborated. "I was just on all the time and, yeah, my body can't do it anymore and I also know the department is in a really good place with the leadership that we have in place" to move forward, she said.
Nicholson has been public about a previous fight with an aggressive form of breast cancer that occurred in 2012.
In an interview shortly before she was sworn in as fire chief, she told the Bay Area Reporter that underwent a double mastectomy and 16 rounds of chemotherapy as she fought her way back to being healthy and able to return to work.
"While I wouldn't wish it on anyone, it was an absolute learning and growing experience for me to go through that and come out on the other side," she told the B.A.R. in 2019. "So going through something like that certainly helped prepare me, you know."
Nicholson's retirement was announced in late July.
Mayor London Breed appointed Nicholson in 2019. Nicholson has been with the department since 1994. Running for reelection, Breed will now have the opportunity to select a new fire chief, though that was not on the agenda as she gave remarks praising Nicholson at the news conference.
"Who would have thought we'd be fighting a once-in-a-hundred-year global pandemic?" Breed asked, referring to COVID. "The fire department was part of that response and Chief Nicholson stepped up."
It was in those challenging times Nicholson showed why she'd been the right choice, the mayor said.
"She got the job done," Breed said. "She was a hands-on chief. She helped the firefighters of this department."
Breed praised Nicholson and the department's work on street crisis response teams, a key initiative of her administration meant to provide help for people with behavioral health crises without involving police.
"San Francisco was the first to do that work — and the work you did to put in place the street crisis response teams ... has been a model to other parts of the country," Breed said.
"I'm happy for your retirement but I know you won't be far away," Breed concluded.
Nicholson, in turn, thanked the mayor. When she had to hold back tears thanking department and city leaders she said, "There's no crying in baseball."
"I just put my foot on the pedal and got going," Nicholson said of her work ethic, adding that when she was selected as fire chief she felt she'd "won the lottery."
Nicholson said she was proud of the fire department's new training facility in Hunters Point.
"I just won't be using it," she said. "That's a bummer."
Nicholson was pleased that in her time as chief the department had hired 640 new people in a department of 1,700-1,800. She said that the SFFD has "grown EMS and community paramedicine to meet demand in the city."
"Now we're a young department but we're tight. We got through COVID, we staffed APEC, whenever something needed to be done, you did it," she said, referring to last November's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference that drew world and business leaders to the city.
Nodding to her status as the first LGBTQ chief, Nicholson praised her department's work in diversity, equity, and inclusion.
"A lot of that was born from where I came from," Nicholson said. "I'm from the time of the consent decree, when the department was ordered to diversify, and I'm a woman in a man's profession. ... also being of the LGBT community, I've had an insight into discrimination and that has helped me understand all different communities."
In 1988, a federal court issued a consent decree to the department, ordering it to hire a workforce of at least 40% minorities and 10% women. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that by 1995, the department was 31% minority and 5.3% women.
More recently, Nicholson defended the department and the city against a lawsuit last year when Assistant Chief Nicol Juratovac alleged discrimination, as the B.A.R. reported at the time. Nicholson's testimony preceded a jury verdict in favor of the city.
When the B.A.R. asked for her greatest accomplishment, Nicholson didn't want to name just one.
"My greatest accomplishment? I don't know that I would rank them," she answered. "I think they are all so important. Having a training center is imperative for this department but I also believe that diversity, equity, and inclusion is imperative for this department. Giving young people an opportunity to do what we do and giving them the skill set to do what we do. Disaster preparedness and training for that is super important. I don't think I can come up with one thing. Maybe that's a lame answer, but every piece plays a part in this department to make us what we are and I'm just super proud of all the work that's been done."
Fire Commissioner Steve Nakajo told the B.A.R. that Nicholson did her job with distinction — "serving the people of San Francisco in all capacities, street crisis response teams, suppression, and all the programs she mentioned in terms of equity."
Nicholson departs at the end of the month.
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