MONROE: Cheerleader learning to save lives

By Maria Prato-Gaines, Staff Writer
   MONROE — At first glance, she’s a typical teenager, a petite, soft-spoken cheerleader for the Monroe Township High School.
   But what’s surprising to learn is that when 18-year-old Christine Mizrahi isn’t waving her pompoms, she’s leading a double life.
   If Christine has a spare moment, it’s already dedicated to the Monroe Township Fire District 1, where she has taken on the role of a junior volunteer firefighter, on-call and ready to save a life or risk her own at any given moment.
   ”I could be at cheerleading practice and running out because there’s a call,” she said.
   But it wasn’t as if Christine always knew that her calling would one day include answering a fire alarm.
   She was first introduced to the career when her family moved to Monroe from Piscataway around 2000. It was then that her father signed on as a volunteer firefighter.
   ”Me and my mom were initially really worried about it,” she said.
   Fear soon sparked into interest when her father came home the day of the Sept. 11 attacks, announcing that he wanted to go to ground zero.
   ”You’re not going without me,” Christine, a fifth-grader at the time, told her father.
   ”I promised him I would go with him.”
   They never made it to ground zero, but Christine waited six long years before joining her father in the firehouse, as junior members are required to be 16 years old.
   ”As a junior member you’re not going to do a lot, you can only assist them,” she said. “But we don’t have a lot of fires in Monroe. I mostly respond to motor vehicle accidents.”
   With each new experience, Christine not only found her niche with the department but discovered her passion in the process.
   ”It’s just the adrenaline, you go and you want to help someone,” she said.
   But along with the job’s highs, also comes its share of lows.
   It’s a lesson Christine learned all too well, the day she rushed out to a fatal accident scene, only to find out that five of her teammates were in the vehicle.
   ”It was probably the worst thing I’ve seen,” she said. “We lost one, but we still saved four. It just made me want to work even harder.”
   Since then, Christine’s positive energy has kept her going, pushing her to the next step in her still budding career.
   Currently, she’s attending the Middlesex County Fire Academy’s firefighter certification training program five days a week.
   ”There’s a lot of textbook and hands-on training,” she said.
   It would appear that an ounce of encouragement can go a long way, too, as Christine’s parents fully support her career path.
   ”I stand behind Christine’s decision of becoming a firefighter although the cards may be somewhat stacked against her due to her height,” said Christine’s mother, Antoinette Mizrahi, about her 4-foot 10-inch daughter. “Ironically, being a cheerleader has given Christine a great amount of upper body strength. Her activities have always been diversified from Girl Scouts and cheerleading to riding ATVs and firefighting. I am very proud of the choices she has made.”
   If all goes according to plan, Christine expects to graduate from the Academy in June and is applying to the University of Maryland, where she hopes to study either fire protection or investigations.
   But even if the future brings a change of the scenery or different role in the department, nothing seems to derail this young woman’s volunteering spirit.
   ”I’m still going to volunteer, even if I go to the University of Maryland,” she said. “I want to be an investigator, but I still want to volunteer. I know someone has to do it and I don’t mind if it’s me.”