By Wendy Leung
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA)
RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif. — Whoever thinks a dog is a man’s best friend has yet been introduced to Susan De Antonio.
The recently retired fire inspector shares a deep bond with her Labrador Retrievers. Just look at the tongue-in-cheek sign posted beside her bed: All dogs welcome, children must be on a leash.
But De Antonio, 61, is not the only person connected to her dogs Gator and Denali.
The community is familiar with the canines thanks to fire station open houses and storytime at the library. Firefighters across the Inland Empire are familiar with them, too, because the dogs use their keen nose to detect evidence of arson. Approximately 140 fires have been investigated by the two dogs.
Jurors in court might know them. Gator’s presentation in front of a jury once helped convict an arsonist to seven years in state person. Just last week, Denali was subpoenaed in another case.
But De Antonio’s retirement puts an end to the city’s Canine Accelerant Detection Program. On Monday, when the Fire Department bids farewell to De Antonio with a customary breakfast at the fire station, they’ll also say goodbye to the city’s best-known dogs.
“I’m very sad the program is not continuing on,” De Antonio said. “Gator has worked on fires totaling $15 million in damages. Denali, $10 million. That’s a lot of sniffing.”
De Antonio, who has been with the Fire Department for 33 years, started the program in 1994 with Newbie, another labrador who worked on 100 fires. Newbie died in 2001.
The Fire Department paid to train all three dogs in arson investigations but De Antonio bore all the costs of food and shelter.
“We never could have sustained the program had Susan not been a part of it. She really went above and beyond,” Deputy Fire Chief Mike Bell said. “I wouldn’t say we wouldn’t have the program again. But it’s highly unlikely.”
De Antonio initiated the canine program with skeptics in the department. But then again, De Antonio started her career in the fire service with her fair share of skeptics.
In 1976, a year before the city was incorporated, De Antonio was hired as fire inspector and investigator, becoming the first women serving a non-clerical role in the department. De Antonio beat out now Fire Chief Peter Bryan for the job, which paid $1,190 a month.
Still minority
Women are still a minority in the fire service but more than three decades ago, such roles in a male-dominated field were unheard of.
When asked how she was treated by her male counterparts, De Antonio asked, “You mean before or after they put a snake in my desk?”
De Antonio once found a burlap bag with a note that read, “Here’s the bag to catch the snake.” A snake waited inside a drawer.
“It was fun things like that,” De Antonio said. “They were just trying to see if I would go screaming out of the office.”
For the record, there was no screaming.
De Antonio got her start in Santa Ana where she literally bumped into a job with the fire service. The Santa Ana native thought her future was with the police department after graduating from the academy and found employment with the Orange County Probation Department.
One day, at a City Hall parking lot, a stranger approached De Antonio about working for the fire service. The Santa Ana Fire Department, facing discrimination charges at the time, was looking for women and minorities to serve.
After one year with Santa Ana, De Antonio moved to the tri-communities of Cucamonga, Alta Loma and Etiwanda. Part of her job as an inspector was to visit businesses to ensure they did not violate safety codes.
It was rough at first. Business owners, who thought they had safety in mind, didn’t understand why De Antonio was telling them what to do. And then there was the gender thing.
“They would ask was I married and why I wasn’t at home,” De Antonio said.
Public awareness of fire safety has improved by leaps and bounds, De Antonio said.
The 2003 nightclub fire in Rhode Island that killed 100 and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 put fire safety procedures in the forefront, De Antonio said.
“I’ve seen a big improvement in the public’s attitude,” she said. “We’re not trying to give people a hard time. It’s just that the public has an expectation of getting out of a fire safely.”
Inspection was just half of De Antonio’s duties.
De Antonio was also an investigator, one whom Chief Bryan said “could be counted on to do an excellent job” and was “very detailed.”
As an investigator, De Antonio found her most reliable partners in her dogs.
Before she brought Newbie on board, she used a mechanical sniffer. She had faith in the device but one district attorney did not. When the battery-operated sniffer was used as courtroom evidence, a suspicious district attorney asked De Antonio to draw the inner workings of the machine.
When De Antonio failed to do so, the district attorney wondered how she could trust a machine that she didn’t fully understand.
“I thought, this is the last time something like this is going to happen to me,” she said.
De Antonio went to find out about how trained dogs can be used as a tool to locate evidence in a fire scene.
“I said, ‘That’s what I want,’ ” De Antonio said. “And since then, I’ve never been asked to draw a cross-section of my dog’s nose.”
Dogs like Newbie, Denali and Gator (short for Investigator) are experts at detecting smells that are impossible for humans to discern. They can sniff out small traces of gasoline, kerosene, diesel, lighter fluid, acetone, brake fluid, transmission fluid and rubbing alcohol, thereby leading investigators straight to the evidence.
They are such a crucial tool that neighboring fire departments, such as the cities of San Bernardino and Riverside, have followed De Antonio’s lead and started canine programs.
De Antonio hopes some day, the city will find the resources to bring the program back. She believes a mounted photo of Newbie, the pioneer of the canine trio, at the Jersey Boulevard station will help keep the memory alive.
For De Antonio, her memories of the fire service will be hard to forget. She’ll miss the adrenaline that each fire call gives her. She’ll miss the unexpected nature of her job. Most of all, she’ll miss the camaraderie with her colleagues.
Last week, De Antonio finished packing her office on Jersey Boulevard, where she was stationed the last 12 years. Packing 12 years’ worth of belongings and 33 years’ worth of memories is no easy task.
The framed photos of De Antonio and her dogs playing in the pool or investigating a fire came down, leaving the walls sad and bare. Stacks of binders documenting more than 1,000 investigations went in a box.
Finally, the only thing left was a computer with a screen saver set to a simple message: Don’t let an arsonist make an ash out of you.
Susan De Antonio is retiring as a fire inspector with the Rancho Cucamonga Fire Department after 33 years. Retiring with her are her arsonK-9 investigators, Denali, left, and Gator, right. The dogs have investigated about 140 fires.
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