RANCHO PENASQUITOS – As a young woman trying to graduate from San Diego's firefighter academy in 1977, Lonnie Kitch thought she had come to the end of the road when she heard the fire chief's words: “There won't be a woman hanging on the back of a fire truck as long as I'm chief of this city.”

SCOTT LINNETT / Union-Tribune It's a wrap, as in hugs and career, for retiring San Diego Firefighter Lonnie Kitch, who embraced Assistant Fire Chief Jeff Carle as Fire Capt. Bill Pitts looked on yesterday in Rancho Penasquitos.

About a year later, that same fire chief signed her department-issued badge, cementing Kitch's place in history as San Diego's first female firefighter.

This week, after 30 years of putting out fires for the San Diego Rescue-Fire Department, Kitch, 52, is hanging up her fire gear for good.

She has worked a job in every fire station in the city. On Monday, she ended her career as an engineer at Santaluz Fire Station No. 46 in Rancho Peñasquitos.

Kitch will take home more than $59,000 a year in pension and continue raising her daughters, 17 and 14, with her husband, a division chief for Poway Fire Department.

Female firefighters by the numbers 940: The number of San Diego firefighters working in fire stations 72: The number of San Diego firefighters who are female 3: Percentage of female firefighters in the country 34: The number of female fire chiefs nationwide SOURCE: San Diego Fire-Rescue Department; Commission to Recruit Women for the Fire Service

She is credited with opening the door for other women, some rising to senior command posts.

“She paved the way for others, including myself,” said Tracy Jarman, who became the city's first female fire chief in 2006. “She's got such a fantastic attitude. Even though she was faced with challenges and issues, it's how she faced those issues.”

Kitch worked during two disasters, the 1985 Normal Heights fire, in which 76 homes were destroyed, and the 2003 Cedar fire.

“As a firefighter, these are the kinds of things that tear at our heartstrings,” she said. “It's a different kind of firefighting.”

During a major fire, you have to go into defensive mode, Kitch said, like fighting a war; you can't control everything and have to figure out what you can save and what you let burn to the ground.

SCOTT LINNETT / Union-Tribune

It's not a career Kitch ever planned on pursuing – until she saw a news story about five women who enrolled in the academy but were dismissed days before graduation.

The women lacked the necessary physical strength, the department said.

When Kitch's boyfriend at the time was encouraged to test for the job, she decided on a whim to join him.

“I didn't know anything about firefighting,” she recalled. She was the only woman accepted to the 17th academy in 1977, but she failed the first phase – just barely – because she couldn't master the 24-foot ladder test.

“That wooden ladder was heavier than I was,” she said yesterday as she looked at old publicity photos of her hoisting a ladder.

She was given a second chance in another academy class, and by then, the ladder test was replaced. She and another woman, Monica Orton, became the first women to graduate in 1978. Orton is now the city's fire marshal.

Today, the San Diego fire department has 72 female firefighters.

Not everyone was as thrilled as Kitch at the start of her career. There were “a lot of attitude adjustments,” she said of entering a man's-only world.

Life for the first few years at the fire stations meant shower and toilet stalls without doors and dorm-style bedrooms. Eventually, women got some privacy.

“There was a little bit of a cold shoulder,” Kitch said. “I'd make a big apple pie and sometimes that worked.” But she said most colleagues eventually came around.

“Throughout the years, people who have given me trouble come back and apologize. I saw the department grow in those ways,” Kitch said. “If it were a constant barrage of negativity, I wouldn't have been able to stay.”