Columbus, OH, mother overcomes age, brain tumor, to become firefighter

Jet, August 9, 2004

At age 46, Trina McCoy, a divorced mother of two teenagers, knew that she'd face challenges in becoming a Columbus firefighter, but she never expected to have to overcome brain surgery.

Moments before her graduation, excitement brimming in her heart, McCoy waits--savoring every moment of the hour-long ceremony--the marching, the bagpipes, and the speeches, while fellow recruits and firefighters stop in the hallway to congratulate her.

She can't help but to smile, when she thinks of what it took to get here ...

McCoy's quest began two years ago when she left her job as an administrative assistant at Ohio State University, having been accepted at the Columbus Fire Academy. She'd applied to the academy three times before she achieved test scores necessary to get in, according to the Columbus Dispatch.

But her dream seemed impossible 18 months ago. McCoy was eight weeks into her training when, during a break with her original recruit class in the academy cafeteria, her head began to throb as an instructor was talking to her. She stared at him, unable to answer and then blacked out.

"I remember (the instructor) was talking to me, but I couldn't talk back," she reportedly said.

Doctors would later tell her she had a seizure. Those with her that day said she sat in a chair, unable to respond to their questions. Paramedics rushed her to the local hospital, where doctors that day found a benign brain tumor the size of a golf ball.

"That was the worst day of my life. It really was. I was so embarrassed. I felt like a failure, like I had let everyone down," McCoy said, according to the paper.

While it seemed her life was spinning out of control because of the tumor, she found comfort in her hospital care and the support she received from both her family and her new colleagues, many of whom she hadn't yet met.

Doctors removed the tumor, leaving a horseshoe-shaped scar, and McCoy's physical recovery looked promising. Her nausea and fatigue had subsided, and three months after her surgery, she was cleared to work again.

But by then her classmates had moved on, and she had missed so much training that she knew she'd have to repeat the 32-week training months later. McCoy's instructors, who at first worried that the work would be too difficult, would witness the outward results of her inner determination as McCoy and her squad got to use their training on staged fires. Instructors watched as McCoy--time and again--would jump off the fire truck, grab the hose and help haul it into a burning house.

"It's about saving lives and people's property," she said, smiling ear to ear. "It's what I've wanted to do since before my daughter was born ..."

Then the moment she'd worked so hard for arrived.

"Trina C. McCoy," Capt. Chris Blair announced.

Her family members and friends--14 in all screamed as she walked across the stage and took her certificate from Mayor Michael B. Coleman.

"I grabbed it so hard, I bent it," she said. "I was so excited ... I always saw the light at the end of the tunnel," she said of her dream of being a firefighter. "It just took so long."