By Leonard Greene
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — Probie Jessica Chiodo graduates from the FDNY fire academy on Friday and starts her first shift on Saturday, and wishes she could get to work sooner.
“I’m very excited to get out into the field,” said Chiodo, one of nearly 300 new FDNY graduates. “I’m working Saturday night and Sunday night. I’m going right in. No time like the present.”
Her mother is already nervous. When Chiodo went to check out her new firehouse a few days before the graduation, her mother told her to be careful, like she was suiting up to tackle a chemical fire.
“I said, ‘I’m not going on a run. I’ll be fine’,” Chiodo said. “She’s a little cautious.”
Her mother has good reason to be. Chiodo’s dad, Peter Chiodo , 65, was an FDNY firefighter for 25 years, and died in 2022 from a 9/11-related illness.
Chiodo, 29, said she has waited her whole life for this moment. She only wishes her dad was still around to see it.
But her mother has been super supportive, fixing her meals, and washing her clothes like she’s still in high school. Chiodo moved from Brooklyn back to her Staten Island home after her father became ill, and decided to stay.
The home was filled with stories of how her father gave up a more lucrative career at an architectural firm, where he had worked for more than a decade, and took a pay cut to join the FDNY.
“He said it was something he always wanted to do,” Chiodo said, “He loved every single minute of it.”
Joining Chiodo and the other graduates at the ceremony will be Fallou Sall, a sergeant in the New York Army National Guard. A late bloomer like Chiodo’s dad, Sall will be starting his FDNY career at the age of 35.
“I still want to serve,” said Sall, a native of Senegal. “I see the hard work they do, and I want to do what they are doing.”
And he still gets to wear a uniform.
“I always believed that in order to participate in the development of your community you should be serving in some kind of way,” Sall said. “It was a passion I had from being a kid. Since I was young I wanted to wear a uniform. Wearing a uniform made me feel proud.”
Sall will be one of 284 graduates putting on the uniform on Friday after 18 weeks of training.
“We are extremely proud of this group of probies, who spent months learning every aspect of firefighting,” said outgoing Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh, who announced her resignation earlier this month after less than two years in office.
“They are a diverse group of men and women from different neighborhoods, backgrounds, and parts of the globe, but they are united in their mission of protecting New Yorkers.”
Chiodo was a college sophomore studying criminology when her father retired in 2014. Like her dad, she abandoned that career path to suit up and fight fires on the streets of New York City.
Her older sister is a nurse.
“It wasn’t really for her,” she said of the FDNY. “For me, it was a no-brainer.”
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