Firefighter Kiera McPherson Can’t Get Enough

You don’t find too many like Kiera McPherson these days. She can’t get enough of being a firefighter at her regular full time job, so she spends what little spare time she has volunteering where it all started, at the Hoodland Fire District.

She trained to become a firefighter and paramedic at Hoodland then landed her dream job as a fulltime firefighter in Central Oregon. But she stayed on as a volunteer firefighter at Hoodland Fire District. If that doesn’t say you love what you do for a living, what does?

“I wanted to give back to the community,” Kiera said. “I lived in the district for a while. I love the community up here. I love the people I work with at Hoodland and I want to continue to give back to the community. They got my foot in the door. They got me the majority of my certifications and a significant amount of my experience.”

Kiera knew what she wanted to do when she graduated from Gresham High School the spring of 2020. She wasted no time in working toward her goal. By the fall of that year, she was volunteering at the Hoodland Fire District.

When she was in high school, she went on a ride-along with her uncle, who worked with the Gresham Fire Department. She got a good taste of what it would be like to be a firefighter.

“I absolutely fell in love with it,” Kiera said. “It was just run of the mill medical calls, a non-injury car wreck and a brush fire. It wasn’t anything remarkable. There was something about the community and the shift at work was like a family. I like that.”

She feels the same way about Hoodland, where her fellow firefighters are like family. She volunteers about 12 hours a week at Hoodland. She put in 100 hours a week when she was living at the Government Camp station, before she got the full time position in Warm Springs.

“I was in the last group of residents before they made it the official student program,” Kiera said. “Instead of paying for school, they gave me free room and board in Government Camp.

Part of her job entailed staffing the station and responding to incidents in the area.

“Hoodland has given me an ample amount of experience,” Kiera said. “This has been a job that I always wanted to do.”

Although the great majority of emergency calls she goes on are medical, Kiera has seen action fighting fires as well. From house fires and car fires to RV fires and brush fires, she has faced about 10 over the few years she has been with Hoodland.