Service fulfilled: Saratoga Springs fire chief retires after four-decade career
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- Saratoga Springs Fire Chief Jess Campbell is pictured in a recent photo.
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- Saratoga Springs Fire Chief Jess Campbell is pictured in a 2014 photo.
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- The Saratoga Springs Fire Department is pictured.
Considering himself a service-oriented individual, Saratoga Springs Fire Chief Jess Campbell believes he found his calling when he became a firefighter 39 years ago.
For 25 years in the Las Vegas Fire Department and 14 years as Saratoga Springs’ fire chief, he was able to make a career of helping people while providing a living for his family.
Campbell cherished the chance to do the job surrounded by like-minded individuals who valued the passion, compassion and empathy it requires.
“I had the opportunity to work alongside people who were and are willing to sacrifice so much, potentially including their life, to serve others,” he said.
Campbell will go to his last day of work today before hanging up the helmet and retiring. Through his service, he started a firefighting legacy within his own family and played a key role in building up the Saratoga Springs department.
“Chief Campbell’s leadership has set a lasting standard for professionalism and service,” said Saratoga Springs Mayor Jim Miller. “His dedication to public safety has helped shape Saratoga Springs into the strong, resilient community it is today.”
Deputy Fire Chief Kenny Johnson, who Campbell wholly supports, will be named interim chief, and Campbell, who joked he does not have many future plans other than a growing to-do list from his wife, will figure out what is next.
“It’s very surreal to know that tomorrow is my last day of what’s not only been a major part of my life but kind of has been my life for all of these years,” he said.
Becoming a firefighter
Campbell said he always heard fire service is inherently a family-oriented industry. He is starting to recognize what that truly means.
While all five of his children have been impacted by his fire service, it left a particular impression on one son, who became a firefighter himself and is a captain with South Jordan Fire. Now, Campbell’s grandson is also working to become a firefighter.
“It’s wonderful knowing that I have the possibility of becoming one of those generational stories as well,” he said.
The lineage started when Campbell was a young father living in Las Vegas and facing career troubles.
At that time, he was approached by a neighbor who was a public information officer for Clark County Fire, who knew he was looking for work, and told him the Las Vegas Fire Department was hiring new officers.
After a yearlong process, Campbell was hired after his first attempt taking a firefighter test — a feat he said is almost unheard of without an industry connection — and embarked on his new career.
“I know I was blessed. I absolutely know there was divine intervention,” he said. “Hearing some of my academy classmates, I started hearing the stories of everyone else that was hired in my class, and just found that I was this freak, the fact that I had just done it once and got hired. But once I got in I began to find out what I had been hired into.”
He worked his way up the ranks, from firefighter to firefighter paramedic, and served as a paramedic for 18 years on the streets of Las Vegas. He was later promoted to fire captain, then fire battalion chief before being appointed assistant fire chief of Las Vegas.
“He was one of my right arms in Las Vegas in my battalion. He was a leader there, did a great job and was very professional,” said former Las Vegas firefighter and current Springville Fire Chief Hank Clinton.
In 2011, Campbell was in the hiring process for a fire chief role in his home state of Washington. At the same time, Clinton, who had just recently taken the Springville job, heard from Saratoga Springs, which was looking for a new chief and asked for a referral.
So Clinton gave Campbell a call and asked, “Have you ever heard of Saratoga Springs?” Campbell said.
He’d never heard of it — and his native Utah County wife only knew of it because of the old amusement park and resort — but Campbell applied for the job.
He said after some hesitation from the city manager, who feared Campbell would turn Saratoga Springs into “Las Vegas North,” he was hired and took on a new challenge as the head of a small department.
“It turned out for our family to be the best opportunity,” Campbell said. “Our now married children were going to school and we were still able to see them; the benefit was there.”
Growing the department
When Campbell arrived in Saratoga Springs, the department had six full-time employees supported by 54 part-time employees to service a city of around 19,000 people.
He said much of the technology was antiquated, and they were lagging behind the infrastructure of departments in similar-sized cities because Saratoga Springs was in its infancy.
He also learned the department did a bit of everything, from structure firefighting to emergency medical services, water and ice rescue on Utah Lake and wildland firefighting.
“I thought, ‘My gosh, how are we even going to begin to do this?'” Campbell said.
After taking a few months to learn what he had gotten himself into, he put together a PowerPoint called “New Beginnings” and declared that the department’s approach was going to change.
He sent firefighters out to receive training and national certifications in specified fields, such as water and ice rescue. He learned how to work with the city to advocate for new positions and grew his department dramatically.
“I knew this small group of people that I had were going to have to be highly qualified, and not just at an awareness level, but they had to be at a technician level in all of these disciplines,” Campbell said. “I provided the vision but I give the credit to my personnel in that they carried it out.”
Paying attention from afar, Clinton credited Campbell’s efforts to expand the paramedic program, navigate staffing challenges and start leadership programs.
“He’s just very innovative. To say he was good at what he did is a short sale,” Clinton said.
Campbell said it was a challenge to keep up with the population growth, and that every projection he made to the city for future personnel or budget became a need ahead of schedule.
By now, Saratoga Springs has 41 full-time employees to cater to more than 60,000 people and respond to nearly 4,000 calls a year. A third fire station is slated to be built by 2028, and 30 additional people will be hired to staff that station and augment the other two stations, Campbell said.
“There’s been a lot of things I’ve had to fight for,” he said. “I know that fire and public safety is not the only department in any city, but it is one of those things that as a chartered community, you say that you will provide your citizenry. … It’s had its challenges, but I just feel so blessed to have been able to be a part of this unique challenge that is specific to Saratoga Springs in a lot of ways.
“I’m so proud of the men and women of our organization, the jobs they do. The care they provide the citizens has just been phenomenal.”
