World’s shortest female firefighter reveals advantage in demanding job

Autumn Kelso is the world’s shortest female firefighter — but her height is the least interesting thing about her.

Standing 4 feet 10 inches, Kelso can keep up with the rest of her crew and even surpass them in some aspects of the job, like the time she used her small stature to crawl through a doggy door.

The 32-year-old was born and raised in Florida. She works as a firefighter paramedic in St. Pete Beach after realizing the corporate world wasn’t for her.

“I went off to college, got into the corporate world. I did that for almost seven years, and I just decided I was done with it,” Kelso told The Independent, adding that she wanted something that “felt purposeful to me.”

Kelso initially brushed off the idea of joining the fire academy, given her height, but with the encouragement of her friends, she decided to strap on her boots.

“I went and did a couple of ride-alongs — absolutely fell in love with it,” she said.

Kelso went through the academy in 2020, starting when she was 26, and has been on the job for a little more than five years. It was a long-running joke in the fire station that she had to be the shortest female firefighter in the world, given how rare it was for someone to be her height in that career.

“One of the guys one day actually looked it up on Google, saw that the current existing record holder was 5 foot and he's like, ‘Okay, well, we have to put your application in.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, let's do it.’”

Kelso filed the paperwork in January and waited months until Guinness World Records came back with the good news. That June day, Kelso was at the fire station when she jumped out of her seat and told her crew that she now held the record as the world’s shortest female firefighter.

“I started this career very hesitant and very nervous, being like, ‘Oh, I'm kind of small,’” Kelso said, calling this a “full circle moment with the craziest twist of fate.”

“The one thing I thought was going to stop me from doing this absolutely incredible career is now something that is being highlighted as an achievement that I now get to share with the world,” she added.

Kelso acknowledged that there are some challenges with being the shortest in her crew, but also pointed out the advantages. She said every firefighter has the same set of requirements they need to meet, no matter their gender or height — and she’s met them.

“I'm sure that there are things that somebody who's much taller than me is better at,” she said. “Does that make me incapable of doing that same task? Absolutely not.”

“To throw a 24-foot ladder, it looks a lot easier for someone who's 6 feet 3 inches. Can I still throw a 24-foot ladder? Absolutely. So it doesn't hinder my job,” she explained.

Kelso said her height comes in handy when she needs to squeeze into tight spaces, like “when we have to go up into attics, or we have to crawl through windows.”

“I've had to crawl through a doggy door before to get into somebody's house,” she recalled.

In one of the scariest moments on the job, Kelso had to make a Mayday call when she fell through the floor while responding to a fire one night.

“Every time I tried to self-extricate myself out of that floor, the floor just kind of kept crumbling around me,” she said. “But I had a really good crew… everybody got me out fine.”

“Firefighting is not for the faint of heart. That's for sure,” she added.

But there are also some heartfelt moments on the job. Sometimes, when Kelso responds to a medical call, people are taken aback by her stature.

“You got little me walking in, and you always get these people who are like, ‘Oh, you’re so cute. What are you going to do?’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, watch.’ And we pick them up off the ground and they're like, ‘Oh my god, you're so strong.’ And I'm like, ‘I work really hard to be here.’”

Kelso started her journey at a community college in the Tampa Bay area, hoping to be a sign language interpreter. She’s fluent in sign language, learning the skill as a child with her sister, who has special needs and struggled to learn how to talk when she was younger.

But as she was graduating college to be a sign language interpreter, her mother passed away.

“I just didn't have it in me to continue college,” she said. “I changed my major from sign language interpreting to just a General Ed degree. That way, I could graduate that semester without having to do any additional work and just called it quits.”

While she didn’t end up having a career in sign language interpreting, she has been able to use the skill as a firefighter. “There's been more calls than you would expect where I've actually had to use my sign language skills, which has been super cool,” she said.

Kelso then ended up at a logistics company where she spent most of her twenties. She managed inventory for grocery chains Publix, Winn-Dixie and Kroger.

“It was a great career. I met a lot of really wonderful people. I just don't think I was the kind of gal that was meant to sit behind a desk,” she said.

When she joined the fire academy, she was warned by others in the field that it would be a difficult feat — but she remained undeterred.

“It was hands down one of the hardest things I've done in life. It was just a very humbling experience going through the fire academy,” she said. “You enter the fire academy, and it doesn't matter if you're 4 foot 10 inches or you're 6 foot 3 inches.

“You enter the fire academy and you think that you are at whatever peak level of fitness is going to be required of you and the fire academy will shut you down immediately.

“It will humble you, and it will show you that you are not physically where you should be,” Kelso added. “We had guys that were fresh out of the military, really good shape in the fire academy and even they were struggling. So, you know, it's not easy for anybody out here.”

Now, her fire station in St. Pete Beach has become her “home away from home.”

“We sleep there, we eat there, we bathe there. So it is like family,” she said. Kelso raved about an “incredible” chicken alfredo that a member of her crew, Mike Zamparelli, makes in the slow cooker, saying, “You cannot beat it.”

When Kelso is not at the fire station, you can find her at the beach or working at her small business, Signs on Site Graphics, where she does vehicle wraps and makes decals for trailers and business windows.

“I really enjoy it because it's something that I get to do that is relaxing,” she said. “I think everybody should have that mental deload that allows them to just decompress from the day.”