When Michele Kaemmerer appeared in Firehouses in the 1990s, she sometimes met firefighters who didn't want to work with her and asked to go home for sick leave.

Los Angeles fire officials support Kaemmerer, the city's first transgender fire chief, by denying the request.

If she hurts her slightly, she won't let it show.

"She really lets things roll off her back nicely. Some things really hurt, but she always has a good attitude," Kaemmerer's widow said. "She never brought it to anyone else. She was never bitter or angry."

Kaemmerer, an early leader in transgender and women's rights in a department not popular with women and minorities, died May 21 at the age of 80 at home in Bellingham, Washington.

Buddhists, Democrats, feminists and lesbian trans women, Kaemmerer undermines the firefighter stereotypes. She joined LAFD in 1969 - and became the captain 10 years later, as early as the transition in 1991.

Kaemmerer said in an episode of the 1999 PBS show "In Life": "Inside a fire building, inside a fire building, in a brush fire...it's great." When Kaemmerer was Captain Engine 63 of Marina Del Rey, the episode featured her.

“The men and women here feel very stressed, making the gay and lesbian captains stressed,” said Savitri Carlson, a fire station paramedic, in the episode. "You have to realize that it's more than just a job. We live, sleep, shower, eat together, change together."

But Kaemmerer brushed off the snoop.

“They were forced to live with lesbians,” she said with a smile as she prepared a meal at the fire station. “And it won’t go away.”

Those close to her say Kaemmerer, who retired in 2003, was able to deal with censorship and breathing rhetoric because she was an optimist who saw the best.

"She really didn't get addicted to those things," said Brenda Berkman, one of the first women in the New York City Fire Department, met Kaemmerer in the 1990s through work for women at the fire department, now known as the Women of Women, who supported female firefighters around the world.

Suspicion sometimes comes from other women. When Kaemmerer joined the women's fire service, some members did not want her to go on a one-day bike tour with them.

Some people think Kaemmerer is “not a real woman” and wonder what bathroom she would use and where she would sleep.

"She made it clear that she had her own tent," Berkman recalled. "I said to my group, 'We can't discriminate against Michelle - after all we are recognized and recognized and treated in fire service.

Kaemmerer took part in the tour.

Born in 1945, Kaemmerer knew she was considered a woman since childhood but was hiding from fear of being beaten or shame. She secretly wore her clothes and followed a traditional life path, married her high school lover (she later divorced), joined the Navy and had two children.

“I am proud of her (when she came out)," Kaemmerer’s daughter said, who requested not to be determined for privacy reasons. “It takes incredible courage to do what she does, especially in a particularly masculine male career.”

When she came out as a transgender person, Kaemmerer was the captain of a small team of LAFD, with three men working under her.

"It's very difficult for them," she said in a PBS interview.

Kaemmerer focuses on her work. Berkman said her fire truck responded to the fire during the 1992 Los Angeles riot.

In a PBS interview, Kaemmerer said some firefighters who knew her before she transitioned still refused to work with her.

Some women who shared the locker room with her were worried that she might make sexual progress. Most firefighters sleep in the same room, but Kaemmerer sometimes doesn't sleep, so others will feel comfortable.

"Sometimes I get bedding, I put it on the floor of the exercise room or weight room and sleep there," she said in a PBS interview.

The bell rang when she talked to PBS about her experience as a transgender woman in the fire department.

"It's an alarm," she said as she stood up and walked out of the interview.