By Elizabethe Holland
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
OVERLAND, Mo. — Angry and bitter after watching her daughter endure 2½ years of surgeries and rehab due to burns suffered in a house fire, Marolyn Schuenke confronted the Community Fire Protection District board of directors Tuesday night.
“You guys all had your arms around me in the hospital saying you’d take care of her,” Schuenke charged as the directors, eyes cast downward, walked to their cars following a closed board meeting called to address the termination of firefighter-paramedic Cindy Schuenke.
The board members — Leo Morrow, Dan Doerr and Fran Costello — and board attorney Neil Bruntrager told reporters they could not comment on Schuenke’s status after the meeting with Schuenke and her attorney, Michael Schaller.
Schaller, meanwhile, expressed outrage over the meeting and the reason for it: the board’s decision in July to terminate Schuenke. That decision, Schaller said, was “far too premature.” He said the directors didn’t let him know Tuesday whether Schuenke’s job status would change.
On March 29, 2006, while searching for the mother of a fellow firefighter in a burning house in Vinita Terrace, Schuenke fell into a fiery basement. She suffered severe burns, the worst of which resulted in the amputation of several fingertips and one of her little fingers. Since the fire, she has had multiple surgeries but has maintained her desire to return to work as a firefighter-paramedic.
Community’s board met with Schuenke and Schaller due to a grievance against the board alleging that the directors had failed to give Schuenke a hearing, as district policy requires, before terminating her in July.
Schuenke learned she’d been fired in a letter from fire district Chief Fred Cain. “Given the nature and extent of your injuries, it is clear that you are unable to perform the duties required in that position,” the letter said.
Schuenke was fired despite a June 11 letter from her surgeon, Dr. Michael Smock, in which he wrote that Schuenke hadn’t reached a plateau in her recovery and that he believed it would take another year or more for her to reach a point of “maximum medical improvement.”
“I cannot rule out the possibility of Ms. Schuenke returning to work as a firefighter/paramedic,” Smock wrote.
Schaller said that while worker’s comp will continue to cover medical costs for injuries Schuenke suffered in the fire, the termination leaves her without coverage for other medical issues. It also strips her of $50,000 in annual salary and pension and other benefits, he said.
“Here’s somebody who risked her life to try to save the mother of a fire captain in this district and now, two years later, when all the smoke and dust has cleared, they’re going to cut her loose and make her live off Social Security disability, and that’s just not fair,” Schaller said.
In tears after the meeting, Schuenke said her career wasn’t over. “This is what I’ve always wanted to do with my life,” she said. “I’m not done yet.”