Pending confirmation by San Antonio City Council next week, Valerie Frausto will lead the San Antonio Fire Department starting on Nov. 1 after a months-long national search.
“It’s a huge responsibility, … I do not take it lightly,” said Frausto, a 51-year-old San Antonio native who has worked for the department in nearly every role for 24 years.
The internationally recognized department includes more than 1,900 employees.
“I just have a passion for doing this kind of work,” she said of becoming the first woman to hold the top chief position here. “I don’t even consider that, really.”
About 6% of SAFD’s uniformed employees are women, according to the department, compared to 5% of career firefighters nationally. She hopes her appointment inspires more women to pursue firefighting.
Her predecessor, Charles Hood, was forced to retire in January after an investigation found he made “inappropriate and offensive” comments toward women. During his 17-year tenure, he was both praised and criticized — he was named the Metropolitan Fire Chiefs Association’s Chief of the Year in 2020, but was later reprimanded for posing for a photo with a woman hired to lie on a table as sushi was served from her body.
Frausto agreed that the culture and image of the department need to be repaired.
“I have zero tolerance for anything even remotely aimed at excluding or isolating or discriminating — or any sort of harassment,” she said. “There’s just no tolerance for that, especially in a fire department when we depend on each other and we have to have that mutual trust.”
Though her gender is not top-of-mind now, it was certainly a consideration growing up in San Antonio as she measured out career options.
“I wanted to help people and I was always interested in the medical field, but I also had a lot of family, uncles [and] cousins, in both the police department and the fire department,” Frausto told the San Antonio Report Friday after City Manager Erik Walsh announced her appointment on Thursday.
“But I’d look and — just like all the other young women — [think] that’s something that I could never do because I was probably 100 pounds wet and nothing but skin and bones,” she said. “I just thought it was one of those jobs that … physically I just wouldn’t be capable of doing.”
She was 25 and studying clinical laboratory science at Our Lady of the Lake University when she was shopping at Rolling Oaks Mall and happened upon a female SAFD recruiter.
“I thought to myself: If she can do it, then I can do it,” Frausto said, joking: “She was about my size and I could probably take her.”
Since the news of Frausto’s promotion on Thursday, SAFD Public Information Officer Joe Arrington’s phone has been constantly vibrating with calls and texts from fellow firefighters and paramedics, he said.
“There’s an excited buzz in the department. I haven’t seen it before,” said Arrington, a 22-year SAFD veteran. While there was a collective celebration and sigh of relief when the firefighters’ labor contract was approved last month, Arrington speculated that “people are more excited about this than getting a raise.”
There were several external candidates for the role, but “we’re far more excited that it’s one of ours than if it would have been somebody from” out of town, Arrington said. “We know her, she’s part of the family.”
Frausto, who is Hispanic, is an avid sports fan and lives in Windcrest with her wife of three years and 9-year-old Labrador named Rusty.
A balanced leader
Frausto joined the department in 2000 and rose up the ranks in both the firefighter and EMS divisions, she launched the Hero Like Her recruiting campaign and camps for young women in 2019 and was promoted to assistant chief and deputy fire marshal in 2022, according to city officials.
“She’s done every job at the fire department, other than be an arson investigator,” Walsh said. Out of the 69 applicants for the chief’s job, “no one had as much experience as she did,” including chiefs of other departments.
In early 2024, after Hood’s ouster, Frausto was appointed interim deputy fire chief of administrative services, where she directed fire prevention, recruiting, wellness, budget and public information activities. Her work on the development of internal policies to improve the department’s management of employee leave and overtime will continue.
For its next fire chief, the city was looking for someone to continue the innovative programs and high marks that SAFD has achieved over the years as well as someone who will strive to be even better, Deputy City Manager María Villagómez said.
“I think it’s a great benefit that she knows what we’re good at and she recognizes the areas that we need to be better at — balancing that with the understanding of how critical our services are to the community,” Villagómez said. “They expect nothing but the best.”
Frausto said she won’t be making any major changes on day one.
“First thing I would do is to have listening sessions and go out and visit the different fire stations and different divisions,” she said. She wants to “make things better for everybody, not only the service that we provide, but also … look out for [employee] safety and well being, because it’s it’s tough — mentally and physically.”
A ‘fragile’ relationship
Joe Jones, president of the San Antonio Professional Firefighters Association, praised Frausto’s selection as the new chief.
“She’s capable, she’s intelligent, she’s strategic, she’s knowledgeable, she’s versatile,” Jones said. “Her diversity of knowledge within the department is probably unmatched … [and] she’s been well-regarded and well-respected everywhere she’s worked.”
Jones said he hopes that Frausto will be given the leeway she needs from city management to effectively run the department and root out what he has referred to as the “management mafia” under Hood’s administration.
“She needs to clean out those command staff and get the bad actors who were either party to or willful practitioners of a perverse brand of leadership out,” he said. “While at the same time, moving us forward into the future. … So she’s got her work cut out for her.”
For roughly a decade, the union, of which Frausto is a member, was embroiled in conflicts with previous city leadership over its labor contract that often spilled into elections and courtrooms.
In June, former union president Chris Steele was charged with felony stalking of Frausto. Police allege he sent emails and texts in an attempt to intimidate her into withdrawing her application.
“I don’t think it impacted the interview process at all,” she said Friday. “If anything, it helped me, because it just made me stronger. … I’m ready to move on. I’m ready to make the department as good as it possibly can be.”
Under new leadership, a page has been turned — if not at least halfway — as a new contract was reached in record time last month that gave firefighters and paramedics a more than 20% raise over three years.
Less than a month after the contract was approved, the fire union announced it would launch a well-funded campaign against Proposition C on the November ballot, which would undo salary and tenure caps for the city manager that it fought for in 2018.
The relationship between the union and city management is still “fragile,” Jones said. “Can [Frausto] be a bridge? I think that remains to be seen. I hope so.”
She has the advantage of being home-grown, he said. “We’ve seen the destruction that comes from a suitcase chief. So all things considered, we’re very optimistic.”
Though it’s not a requirement for the chief’s job, Frausto said she will no longer be a union member.
“It’s almost like an indication of my dedication to the city and to … public safety, because that really is going to be my focus,” she said.
But she maintains a good relationship with Jones, she said, which he confirmed.
Walsh acknowledged that there will likely always be tension and political tiffs between the union and the city, but the city’s job is to continue to support the success of the department and its chief.
“She’s going to score touchdowns and I’ll block and tackle,” he said.
