Former Graton firefighter’s bitter legal dispute with district ends in $535,000 settlement
The first time Sapphire Alvarez visited the Graton Fire Protection District station to inquire about fire training, she was drawn like a moth.
“I went, and everyone was super nice, super accepting,” Alvarez recalled recently. “I decided, I can do this. It’s not just a guy thing.”
Alvarez, who was born and raised in Sonoma County, joined the fire district in 2011 and would spend a decade as a nonsalaried firefighter there, balancing that work with her career as an EMT.
Her interactions at the station soured badly during that time. In a civil suit she filed two years ago against Graton Fire Protection District, Alvarez described being passed up for promotion and shunned by her mostly male colleagues, her work belittled and her mistakes blown out of proportion by the fire chief, Bill Bullard.
Alvarez sued the fire district in January 2022 for failing to act on Bullard’s alleged retaliation and discrimination, and in February of this year she settled for $535,000. The fire district paid $285,000 of that, with the rest covered by its insurance. Part of the settlement agreement called for her to resign her volunteer position with the fire district.
It doesn’t feel like a victory to Alvarez, who lives on the outskirts of Sebastopol and turned 45 on Friday.
“There was the hope I was going to get an apology letter from Bullard,” she said. “The letter I received was not even close to what I was expecting. So honestly, I hate it. I feel like I’m the one who’s been punished, and no one else has. I had to step away from the position I loved. Nothing has happened to anyone else.”
Bullard insisted he bore no animosity toward Alvarez.
“Everything that she was subject to, every other member of the department was subject to the same standards,” the chief said in an interview.
The fire protection district, in a memorandum urging Judge Christopher Honigsberg to dismiss the case last July — he denied that request — called Alvarez’s claim “utterly trivial.”
The memorandum notes that she was unable to cite other female firefighters in Graton who reported similar discrimination — there were no women on the force when Alvarez joined; there are currently seven — and that her dismissal wasn’t retaliatory, but in fact appropriate to the circumstances.
“The Graton Fire Protection District firmly believes it complied with all laws and denies the claims that were advanced by Ms. Alvarez,” the district’s counsel, William Ross, wrote in a statement to The Press Democrat. “However, given the practical realities and legal fees associated with litigation in California, the District Board of Directors approved a settlement. … The settlement allows the District to return to focusing on its day-to-day emergency, fire, and medical response operations.”
The protracted battle left a trail of bitter feelings in Graton. And while Alvarez’s claims are disputed, she spotlighted a common experience for female firefighters in a field still overwhelmingly dominated by men.
Employment data indicate less than 5% of career firefighters nationwide are female, compared with about 12% of sworn law enforcement officers and 16% of active military personnel.
In 2017, the City of Petaluma agreed to pay $1.25 million to a former firefighter there, Andrea Waters, who claimed she was routinely harassed and discriminated against because of her gender.
Bullard said he’s happy to have helped grow the numbers in Graton.
“I’m proud that female firefighters are inviting their friends to volunteer here,” he said. “To me, that’s the biggest recruitment tool we have. If we weren’t open to all folks working here, that wouldn’t be happening.”
Alvarez’s civil complaint describes a chilly, occasionally hostile work environment during her 10 years at Graton’s department, a special utility district that provides fire and medical response to residents of the town, unincorporated parts of northern Sebastopol and western Santa Rosa. She had supporters in the ranks, but 8-10 members of the force allegedly resented her presence.
The lawsuit portrays those firefighters as “refusing to ride on an engine if she were onboard, leaving a room when she entered, openly denigrating her skills, spreading malicious rumors to the effect that she could not be trusted on the ground, refusing to work overnight shifts if she was signed up for that shift, and occasionally screaming at her.”
The district’s plea for dismissal states that in March 2017, before an annual awards show, “these firefighters discussed giving Plaintiff an award for being the laziest member.” Bullard, it says, stepped in to stop them.
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