by Sophia Gates, Oregon Capital Chronicle
October 14, 2024
When Dacia Grayber was 10 years old, the chimney on her family’s home caught fire.
She watched in amazement as firefighters climbed onto the roof to put the fire out.
“I want to be a firefighter someday,” she told one.
She still remembers his reply.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she recalled him saying. “You can join the ladies auxiliary and bake cookies. Your brother can be a firefighter.”
But Grayber did become a firefighter and forged her own path, something that’s helped her as an Oregon state legislator. The way she sees it, reaching across the aisle as a lawmaker isn’t so different from discussing controversial subjects like abortion and gun control with male firefighters whose views are vastly different than hers.
“She is able to advocate in a meaningful way that is not threatening,” said Karl Koenig, president of the Oregon firefighters union. It’s “a gift that not a lot of people have.”
Grayber, 49, is a Democrat in her second legislative term and now represents the 28th House District, which covers southwest Portland and east Beaverton. At the same time, she works at Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue outside Portland and is the only firefighter in the Legislature.
With more than two decades of firefighting experience, including nearly 12 at Tualatin, she understands the demands of the profession, and as a medic, she knows the problems emergency workers face. She’s been their champion in the Legislature, pushing bills to expand coverage of cancer treatment for firefighters, lower the retirement age for firefighters and police officers and provide state funding for firefighter apprenticeship programs.
She was a chief sponsor of a bill – more than 20 years in the making, a release said – that launched a statewide emergency medical services program to modernize a previously fractured system.
She’s taken on problems facing everyday Oregonians, too.
Last year, she was a chief sponsor of a bill to expand the availability of naloxone, a drug used to treat opioid overdoses. And earlier this year, she was among the co-sponsors of a bill providing funding for infrastructure around affordable housing developments. Both bills were bipartisan and became law.
Grayber said all lawmakers are influenced by their personal experiences – and hers are different than most.
“I am fortunate to be a conduit of a lot of different experiences,” she said.
She also draws from what she’s seen on the job – including “25 years of names and faces” of people grappling with addiction – in crafting and supporting legislation.
“There’s usually a person’s face or a story that I am thinking of when I talk on the floor,” Grayber said. State Rep. Dacia Grayber and her husband Matthew Laas, both firefighters, keep a pile of gear above a cabinet at their home in Portland on Sept. 29, 2024. (Rian Dundon/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
‘A really wonderful thing’
Grayber’s path into firefighting was a winding one.
When she was a teenager, her family moved upstate from Saratoga Springs, New York to the rural town of Cambridge. There were less than 50 in her high school graduating class.
The small town didn’t suit her. So she moved to Portland to study at Reed College, a private university she had toured and fell in love with two years earlier.
It was a culture shock.
She is the child of two public school teachers and had a modest upbringing. Many of her peers had affluent backgrounds and they jetted off on faraway vacations for fall break while she stayed in the dorm.
Then a close friend died of a heroin overdose.
It was “shattering,” Grayber said.
She left Reed and returned to Cambridge.
But she eventually returned to the West Coast, at one point working as a kindergarten classroom aide, a waitress and a carpenter on Washington’s Orcas Island.
Someone on the island suggested Grayber join the volunteer fire department.
“I don’t know that I’m cut out for that,” she remembered responding.
But she participated in a drill rescuing people – in this case plastic dummies – trapped in cars. She became hooked on helping people on the worst day of their lives.
“It’s a privilege and a really wonderful thing,” she said, “to be the person that says, ‘I’m going to try to do something to make it better.’” Grayber and her husband have a collection of awards at their home in Portland. (Rian Dundon/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
Wins seat in 2020
As a lawmaker, she’s also trying to make people’s lives better.
She started her legislative career as an advocate. After the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in 2012, Grayber joined the gun control group Moms Demand Action, which now has chapters across the county. As part of that group, she lobbied legislators in Salem on gun control bills.
“A lot of firefighters are really uncomfortable (with) my stances on gun violence prevention,” she said. “I hear a lot about it at work.”
Later, she lobbied for worker protections on behalf of her firefighting union, the Oregon State Fire Fighters Council, along with the Oregon chapter of AFL-CIO and her local chapter of the International Association of Fire Fighters.
She also advocated for paid family medical leave, which became personal in 2019 when her husband was diagnosed with work-related throat cancer. He’s now in remission, but she had to use her sick days to take time off to care for him. A lot of lawmakers also supported family leave, leading to the passage of House Bill 2005, which created a paid family leave program in Oregon.
In 2020, she ran for office with the encouragement of her state representative, Margaret Doherty, a Democrat who represented the 35th District.
She won a seat in the state House, succeeding Doherty in the Tigard-based district, which later shifted north under redistricting. She served on the Business and Labor and Emergency Management, General Government and Veterans committees, as well as the Special Committee on Wildfire Recovery.
Now, representing the 28th District, she’s chair of the Labor and Workplace Standards committee and vice-chair of Emergency Management, and is also a member of the joint Ways and Means public safety subcommittee.
One key piece of legislation Grayber helped push through was House Bill 4113 in 2022. The proposal, which became law, added bladder and gynecologic cancers to the list of cancers assumed to be caused by the work involved in firefighting for the purposes of workers’ compensation.
Before, firefighters with testicular cancer had little trouble getting compensated, unlike women who developed job-related ovarian cancer, she said.
And as chief sponsor of House Bill 2294 in 2023, she helped win approval of $20 million for firefighter apprenticeships, something Koenig of the union praised.
In past decades, he said, rookies had to work as volunteer firefighters for a few years before landing a paying position.
“That doesn’t really lead to anything other than a certain demographic coming to the fire service,” he said.
Grayber also helped develop Senate Bill 762, a wildfire preparedness bill. Signed into law in 2021, it called for the Oregon Department of Forestry to create a statewide wildfire hazard map, which came out in 2022. The map drew sharp opposition from homeowners in high-risk areas, who worried insurers would use it to increase their rates or cancel their policies. The department redid the map, though many homeowners are still unhappy about it. Grayber’s gear, at her home in Portland on Sept. 29, 2024, is well used. (Rian Dundon/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
‘Big fire mode’
While driving some of her work in Salem, wildfires have also taken her away from the Capitol. When fires flare, she has to respond even if that means cutting an election campaign short – something she had to do in 2020 when she spent more than a week fighting fires in Clackamas and Washington counties while trying to win her first election.
Climate change has upped the pressure on firefighters, with larger and more frequent wildfires in Oregon and elsewhere affecting farmers, ranchers and residents. This year, wildfires across the state have burned nearly 2 million acres – a record – though the Portland area has been spared.
“The people in the metro area right now have no sense of what’s happening in the rest of the state,” Grayber said.
Previously, firefighters faced one or two big fires a year, but now they’re often in “big fire mode,” with nine or 10 huge fires burning at once, Koenig said.
When firefighters have to travel to fight those big wildfires, “it creates this huge vacuum” for those left behind, he said.
“Imagine all the impact on our families,” he said. “You can’t go home because you don’t have any relief.”
Balancing her personal life
Splitting her time between two demanding jobs has left Grayber with little time for her personal life.
She has to take a leave of absence from firefighting every time she goes into session, losing out on pay and retirement accrual. She pays a premium to keep her health insurance during these periods.
Labor shortages in the fire service have put her under further strain. After a 24-hour shift, she explained, she could get a call at the last minute telling her she has to work for another 24 hours because someone called in sick.
She’s also struggled with guilt about being away from four of her kids, who were teenagers when she became a legislator.
They told her it wasn’t bad: They got to watch more movies, play more video games and eat more pizza. Still, she occasionally has regrets.
“I wish I could go back in time sometimes and have better balance,” she said.
It’s something she’s still figuring out as she juggles both jobs. Grayber cuddles with her 14-year-old rescue, Sylvie, outside her home in Portland on Sept. 29, 2024. (Rian Dundon/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
She ran unopposed in the primary, and as a Democrat, who won more than 80% of the vote in the last general election, she is likely to again represent the deep blue district in Salem. Next term, she hopes to pass more legislation on emergency medical services by tackling a shortage of paramedics and emergency medical technicians. She is also working on policies to increase the state government’s “implementation, accountability, and transparency,” among other priorities, according to her chief of staff.
She’s often asked whether it’s harder walking into a session or facing a fire.
“It depends.” she said. “Fires are more predictable.”
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