SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Saturday mornings find Santa Fe's first female fire chief spinning plates.

"Actually, so far I can only do one," laughs Barbara Salas, who is learning the new skill in Wise Fools' Family Circus class with her husband, paramedic Patrick Salas, and their son, Sebastian, 3.

But the metaphor is not lost on her. Keeping a group of plates spinning in the air feels like her work with the city of Santa Fe Fire Department for some 15 years.

Retiring Fire Chief Chris Rivera says fire marshal-paramedic Salas, 36, has "worked her way up the ladder." And he's glad another promotion to chief has come from inside the department.

"There are so many quirks about Santa Fe," Rivera said. "How do you explain Zozobra to an outsider? You can't."

Salas said being a woman in a mostly male profession has not been a problem for her, even though there have been sexual harassment suits filed by female firefighters in the department in the past few years.

"I think there are still people who think women shouldn't be in the fire service," Salas said. "But I have never personally run into anyone who didn't support me."

At just 5 feet tall, Salas says she passed the same test every firefighter takes to qualify, including carrying a 50-pound hose up and down four flights of stairs and climbing a 75-foot aerial ladder to make sure she had no fear of heights.

Salas doesn't officially take over until Aug. 1, at which point she'll be on call 24-7 to the community. It's a community she knows well, having attended local elementary and middle schools and graduating from Santa Fe High in 1991.

The oldest of five children, Salas has only officially left Santa Fe once, when she went away for three months after high school to attend Mesa Community College in Arizona.

"I got homesick" and came back to Santa Fe, she said. "Thankfully, I just took a leave of absence."

She started working for the city as a lifeguard when she was 16, which is part of what made the fire chief job a plausible next move for her. Salas qualifies for retirement now, with 20 years, but can work until she has 22 years and 11 months with the city. The city's fire chief serves at the mayor's pleasure, and Salas points out that someone with less time on the job might not want to take a chance on job security.

It was an experience at her first lifeguarding job, at a local pool, that put her on the path to firefighting. "I had a near-drowning happen there," she said. "I had to do CPR on this little girl. It turned into a very chaotic scene, but I felt very calm, very in control. That's when I felt it was a calling."

The paramedics who arrived on the scene kept in touch with her afterward, and Fire Department Captain Eddie Duran would come by the pool and give her updates about the little girl's progress. "He put the bug in my ear that I might be a good paramedic," Salas said.

She first became an instructor in CPR and first aid, then took basic and intermediate EMT classes. "I wanted to be a paramedic, but to work for the city you have to be EMT-trained and firefighter-trained.

"And then I trained really hard to get into the fire department," she said. "There were 300 of us taking the written test in '95 — 150 passed and went on to take the physical agility test."

When she moved into a job as a fire inspector, it was a difficult choice. "I loved being a paramedic but I wanted to start a family," Salas said. "In the field, you work 48 hours on and 96 hours off. It really wreaks havoc on your body." But going into fire prevention offered her an 8-to-5, Monday-through-Friday job.

Salas' main concerns for the city over the coming years have to do with annexation.

"The city is going to take over almost 10,000 new county acres over the next five years," she said. "We're going to have a huge increase in population there and an increase in fires and medical calls. Some of this area does not have hydrants or paved streets."

Two new fire stations are also planned. And even though the department's annual family fiesta for the community had to be canceled for budgetary reasons, Salas hopes the department's July 18 celebration — opening the new Fire Station 3 — can help replace that.

Salas' plans for the new station also include a Fire Museum.

"Jason Arwood is a fire engineer with us, and he has been working very hard at collecting fire department memorabilia," she said. "He has some of the first vehicles and uniforms."

After a fire in the early 1900s that burned down the Palace Hotel in Santa Fe and proved too big and unwieldy for the "chemical truck" that tried to fight it, the department got its first truck with water.

"It was like a giant fire extinguisher on wheels," Salas said of the early chemical truck, which will be displayed at the new Fire Museum.

Salas hopes the new fire station and Fire Museum can be a regular stop for school field trips. The site will also house the department's "smoke trailer," which simulates a home catching on fire and is currently used to tour from school to school.

"It's one thing to say, 'Imagine the smoke inside,' but another to be in a room with smoke filling up the room and no visibility and say, 'OK, find the window and get out,'" Salas said. "We even had teachers panicking and trying to jump over kids to get out."

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Information from: Albuquerque Journal, http://www.abqjournal.com