Two years ago Connect for Kids (CFK) profiled on their website an all-girl firefighting and emergency medical team in Aniak, Alaska, called the "Dragon Slayers." It was a terrific story, and CFK kindly allowed What Kids Can Do to reprint it on our website ("Angels in the Snow"). Since then, the Aniak girls have been growing up, and so has the program. CFK's reporter Holly St. Lifer recently revisited the group. Here is her sequel.

The Alaskan community of Aniak, pop. 572, doesn't offer many of the things young people growing up seem to want—no multiplex, no music scene, not many jobs. So when fire chief Pete Brown was interviewed two years ago for our first report on the Dragon Slayers, the all-girl firefighting and emergency medical team he established, he expected most of the girls to eventually be catching a permanent ride out of town. "Unless you want a job loading and unloading planes, there's not much to strive for here," he said then. "These kids are overachievers. We'd love to keep them, but most won't stick around after they graduate."

To his surprise, and to the village's benefit, Brown was wrong.

Though many of his girls did leave Aniak to attend colleges elsewhere, in many cases their love of their community, culture, and the wide-open spaces of the bush has drawn them back. Others have chosen to stay in Aniak and pursue their degrees locally. "Although an emphasis on pitching in and helping loved ones are dominant aspects of Indian culture, I underestimated how big an influence these values had on these girls," says Brown now.

Read "Angels in the Snow," Holly St. Lifer¹s original 2003 story about the Dragon Slayers. Four days after graduating high school, 23-year old former Dragon Slayer April Kameroff began working as an assistant lab technician at the local clinic. She's still on call 24/7 with the Aniak Fire and Rescue Department and has since graduated to an EMT-2. In her spare time, she's taking online courses toward her associate degree as a lab technician.

Candi Nickolie, a high school sophomore who's been a Dragon Slayer for two years, plans to remain in Alaska for college and return to Aniak to work as a Medivac flight nurse. Slayer alum and Brown's daughter Mariah, a US Navy corpsman stationed in Norfolk, Virginia and serving as a medic and ambulance driver, will complete her service, get her degree as a physician's assistant and then come home to work in the same clinic as Kameroff. "I love the simplicity of Alaskan life and the charm of living in a small community where everyone knows one another. I get enormous satisfaction from helping people I know," says Mariah.

Spreading The Word

Once Brown began to see his graduates growing up and taking on vital medical jobs in Aniak, he started spreading the word by taking his Dragon Slayers on the road. "Quality care is severely lacking in the bush," says Brown. "It's difficult finding doctors and other healthcare professionals willing to set up shop in the Alaskan wilderness. But I thought if my girls are willing to stay here and become our doctors, nurses and pediatricians, maybe kids in other villages will too."

The Dragon Slayers fly out to villages as far as a thousand miles away, presenting 90-minute demonstrations. "Thanks to Brown, in the last three years, more than a dozen bush villages have started similar teen-staffed, round-the-clock emergency relief teams including McGrath, Hooper Bay, Shageluk, Nenana and Galena," says sub-regional clinics administrator Susan Hoeldt. Hoeldt sees Brown's strategy of "growing our own," as the only way to provide consistent, quality healthcare to much of Alaska's interior. "We hire medical staff from the outside without much success; the turnover is continuous because each village is so isolated," says Hoeldt.

Three years ago Brown's brigade also began taking part in the Galena Summer Health Academy, a three-week fire and EMS training course offered at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. Its purpose is the same as Brown's: to turn Alaska's young people on to careers in healthcare. As part of the course, they take their training back home to their villages and work with health aides and fire departments while earning five college credits. "We're finding that once these kids see what a difference they're making in bettering their community, they're committed to staying," says Brown. For instance, one student from Aniak earned a certificate in phlebotomy without leaving home.

Instilling A Sense of Purpose

Brown also sees the Dragon Slayers program as a vehicle for building confidence in its young members. "The training teaches them how fire burns, how it spreads, how to make rescues from land, water and ice. But mostly, my goal is to help them develop their self-esteem. These girls are often first responders to a fire or medical emergency and I'm constantly reminding them that if they can succeed at this job, they can accomplish anything," says Brown.

And that includes earning a good salary in their home village, in spite of Alaska's consistently high unemployment rate. (As of August 2005, the US Department of Labor ranked Alaska as having the fifth-highest unemployment rate at 6.6 percent, down from second at 7.5 last year.) Kameroff, for example, makes about $44,000 a year including benefits. "Once she's certified she'll be worth about $60,000," says Brown. "That level of income for a 25-year-old woman without a college degree is unheard of in the bush." Nickolie will start at $65,000. Mariah Brown will make $75,000. "In comparison, most workers get anywhere from ten to fifteen dollars an hour," says Brown.

When asked what they'd be doing had they not been Dragon Slayers, 21 year-old Mariah Brown says she would have either stayed in the military or "bagged groceries for the rest of my life." Kameroff, who describes herself as "not the college type," says, "I'd just be home doing nothing and sitting in front of the TV."

Or worse: "Alaska has one of the highest teen suicide rates in the country," says Galena Summer Health Academy creator Margaret Wilson, an Athabascan Indian and registered nurse. "When you're a teenager living in a village with only 250 people and no economy, you're not exposed to much in terms of career opportunity. I come from that world and I've seen for myself how depressed these kids get. When Pete Brown shows up at their doorstep, he's offering them a unique sense of purpose."

There's No Place Like Home

Since the Dragon Slayers were born in 1993, 20 have gone on to related careers. Six more, not including Kameroff and Mariah Brown, are still members of the Aniak Fire and Rescue department. Today, the team is in transition; two just graduated but will continue to volunteer. That leaves only three for the present, two of whom happen to be boys. "This is real unusual because most guys don't want to commit to the rigors of the program," says Brown. "But in the case of these kids, one is Nickolie's nephew and the other's here thanks to pure parental pressure." There are four girls in Brown's training program for younger girls, the Lizard Killers, waiting to come of age and join the Dragon Slayers.

Like her father, Mariah Brown is also on a mission to convince young people that life in Alaska doesn't have to be a dead end. "Whenever I come home I gather groups of kids together and we talk about the career path I've taken and I look at each and every one of them and say, 'You can do this.' I'm living proof that it's possible to create a successful life for yourself here. We talk about how important it is to come back and make this place better."

Resources:

American Association of University Women tracks trends, challenges and accomplishments in girls' learning and gender equity.

Girls Inc. is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring all girls to be "strong, smart, and bold." For over 55 years, Girls Inc. has provided educational programs to millions of American girls, particularly those in high-risk, underserved areas. Today, innovative programs help girls confront subtle societal messages about their value and potential, and prepare them to lead independent and fulfilling lives.

Girl Power!, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, offers a wealth of programs and tips to help 9- to 13- year-old girls make the most of their lives.

New Moon Publishing produces media for "every girl who wants her voice heard and her dreams taken seriously and for every adult who cares about girls," including a monthly magazine, a series of books, a TV show, and a newsletter for the parents of girls.