By Dena Braun-Roché
Photos by Richard Maack

What little boy doesn’t dream of being a fireman? Garret Olson for one. Despite the fact that his dad was a fireman and one of the first paramedics in the nation, Olson had his sights set firmly on serving his country in a medical capacity with the military.

“It wasn’t until I was a cadet at the Air Force Academy that I realized, while everyone else was watching the jets, I was looking at the fire trucks on the tarmac,” says Olson, now the Fire Chief of Scottsdale, Arizona. “I was always interested in serving my country and my community, but I realized I wanted to do it at the local, not national level.”

Garret Olson, MAOM ’03, Fire Chief of the City of
Scottsdale, Arizona, at the Tom Hontz Memorial
Public Safety Training Center.

Climbing the career and education ladders

For several years, Olson invested all his time and energy into becoming a firefighter—he started as a part-time firefighter in Orange County, California, in 1988 before joining Mesa Fire Department in Arizona in 1990. But in the back of his mind, something was missing. “It was unacceptable to me that I hadn’t finished my degree,” he says.

The City of Mesa had a cohort program with the University of Phoenix so Olson enrolled, earning his Bachelor of Business Management in 1997 and his Master of Arts in Organizational Management in 2003. “The University of Phoenix made getting a good education logistically easier for a guy with a wife, child and job. It was stability in an otherwise very dynamic life,” Olson says.

He continued his education completing a four-year Executive Fire Officer Program through the National Fire Academy where he penned three perfect-scoring applied research papers. “I’ve always felt education was important. You have to constantly better yourself; you’re never there,” says Olson.

Called to serve his country

Life often takes unexpected turns, and for Olson, it was the events of 9/11 that brought him full circle back to serving his country. At the time, he was in charge of the Mesa Fire Department’s Preparation and Response to Terrorism Attacks Unit. In that capacity, he was exposed to people and agencies involved in that realm, including the Red Cross.

“If we had to rename the fire service today, we wouldn’t call it a fire department. People don’t realize that the fire department is the primary emergency medical care; the ambulance is transportation.”

Garret Olson, MAOM ’03

Olson knew that the fire service would fulfill both his need to serve and his interest in medicine.

“Seventy-five to 80 percent of what we do in firefighting is health care,” he says. “If we had to rename the fire service today, we wouldn’t call it a fire department because the vast majority of what we do is medical response. People don’t realize that the fire department is the primary emergency medical care; the ambulance is transportation.”

So, after two years at the academy, Olson left the Air Force to pursue a new dream.

After the 9/11 terrorist attack, the Red Cross needed a firefighter to serve as a liaison between the agency and the Emergency Operation Center. Olson answered the call. “I spent several weeks at the Emergency Op Center [in New York City] listening to the briefings like a fly on the wall and sharing with the Red Cross what needs they could meet,” explains Olson. “I’ll never forget it. If you weren’t there, you have no idea of the scale of the tragedy. It was breathtakingly huge.”

Building a fire department

Olson’s ability on the job and his extensive education didn’t go unnoticed. In 2004, when Scottsdale was faced with creating a fire department after Rural Metro decided not to renew its contract with the city, Olson was recruited to serve as the Training and Professional Development Chief of the new department and tasked with hiring a 250-person staff.

“It was a flurry of activity for nine months,” Olson remembers. “It was a unique circumstance in the U.S. fire service. Building a fire department from scratch simply didn’t happen. I’ll never forget it; it was fantastic.”

In 2011, Olson was promoted to Fire Chief. As the top executive of the department, Olson draws on his management degrees and his personal philosophies on leadership to motivate his department, which has a 97 percent approval rating from the community. The strong community support comes because the department views itself as being in the customer service business. “People expect us to come and put fires out and do CPR, but it’s the additional things we do that define their satisfaction,” says Olson.

For example, a team was called to help an elderly woman who fell. While they attended to her needs, a firefighter noticed that part of something in her bathroom was broken. The next day on his own time, he went back to her home and fixed it.

“That kind of thing happens often in our department,” Olson says. “I put out a weekly video to the department that highlights the great things that happened that week,” he says. “If I celebrate those things, it inspires other firefighters to do similar things and that’s how you preserve good culture in an organization.”

Getting back to the community

Despite tremendous success in his administrative roles of civil service, Olson remains passionate about serving his community on a more personal level. “The entire time I was on the fire truck, I had the immediate gratification of helping the community, but as I ascended through the ranks, my opportunity to have a direct impact at the community level lessened,” Olson explains. “So I started to look for ways to contribute to the community.”

He found his local Rotary Club where he devotes his spare time to working with Youth Salute, a leadership program designed for high schoolers, and Scottsdale Training and Rehabilitation Services (STARS), a nonprofit that provides services for individuals with developmental and cognitive disabilities.

Olson’s need to serve even extends into his personal life where the self-described pizza-making fanatic takes immense pleasure from cooking for his friends.

“After a week of meetings and budgets that may not see results for a long time, I love making pizza for my friends because, after just a few minutes, it’s done,” he says. “The result is that people are smiling and everyone is happy. It’s a true joy.”

Dena Braun-Roché is a freelance journalist covering lifestyle profiles, travel and health and wellness. She is based in Phoenix.

“I put out a weekly video to the department that highlights the great things that happened that week. If I celebrate those things, it inspires other firefighters to do similar things and that’s how you preserve good culture in an organization.”

Garret Olson, MAOM ’03