Most 18-year-olds focus on deciding what they want to do after high school.

Alyssa Shade already knows.

The Yoder teen already is a certified EMT, a red-carded wildland firefighter and a member of the all-volunteer Yoder Fire Department.

Another 18-year-old, J.R. Ruiz, joined the department only a few months ago. He recently returned from a wildfire-severity assignment in Colorado and, this past week, was helping on the South Fork Fire near Cody.

Behind them is another generation waiting in the wings. Fire Chief Justin Burkart’s 17-year-old son, Jayden, is already part of the department, while his 16-year-old daughter, Maykayla, recently joined as a junior firefighter.

In a profession where volunteer departments nationwide are struggling to recruit younger members, Yoder appears to be on a different track.

How does a town of just 134 people keep producing firefighters sought out and trusted to fight some of the nation’s biggest wildfires?

The answer starts with volunteers investing in one another.

“We’re 100% volunteer,” Burkart told Cowboy State Daily.

Beyond Wyoming

The tiny Goshen County community sits along U.S. Highway 85 south of Torrington, surrounded by hay fields and open prairie.

The Yoder Volunteer Fire Department protects roughly 248 square miles and serves about 700 residents throughout its fire district.

Yet those volunteers routinely deploy across the West, cutting fire lines with bulldozers, staffing engines on major incidents and supporting wildfire operations from Colorado to Virginia.

“We have a reputation of really sending out some professional firefighters to these incidents,” Burkart said. “It’s not a game to us. It’s something that we really take some pride in.”

Burkart joined the department as an 18-year-old in 1999 after discovering federal wildfire assignments could help pay for college.

“I found out it was a good way for me to pay for college,” he said.

Today, the department routinely sends engines, a water tender and two dozers on federal assignments, with about 22 members participating regularly in the federal fire program.

Last year, Yoder firefighters collectively spent about three months helping battle wildfires in California. Burkart said the department paid roughly $1 million to firefighters and seasonal personnel through federal assignments in 2025.

For a department staffed entirely by volunteers, those assignments have become far more than an opportunity to earn extra income.

“They’ll have more contact with live fire over a two-week period than most volunteers would have in a three- or four-year period,” Burkart said.

The knowledge comes home.

Heather Trompke, who serves on a Rocky Mountain incident management team, works in the finance section tracking personnel and equipment time during major incidents.

“We get to bring all of this stuff back,” Trompke said. “We can train and show how to fill out documents properly, and that translates into a smoother fire for everyone else when they go out.”

“There’s always something to learn in wildland firefighting,” added firefighter Bailey Powell. “It doesn’t matter if you’ve been doing it for 60 years or five.”

Growing Firefighters

Like volunteer departments across America, Yoder faces a challenge that has nothing to do with flames.

Recruiting.

“If you look nationwide, the volunteer fire service is aging out,” Burkart said. “The younger generation is not really involved in that.”

Instead of waiting for volunteers to walk through the station doors, Yoder and neighboring Goshen County departments are trying to grow their own.

Robert Shade helps coordinate a countywide junior firefighter program that introduces teenagers to the fire service before they turn 18.

“Right now, nationally, pretty much every trade, every job there is, there’s a lack of young people getting involved,” Shade said.

Junior firefighters learn equipment familiarization, truck maintenance, hose deployment, pump operations and safety procedures before becoming full firefighters.

“They’re the future,” Shade said. “We’ve got to make sure that we get them involved.”

Rather than keeping the program confined to Yoder, departments across Goshen County work together so young firefighters train alongside one another.

“We’re reaching out and kind of working with the whole county,” Shade said. “It helps everyone get to know each other.”

The program appears to be paying off.

Shade started attending meetings as a teenager after encouragement from her boyfriend, who happens to be Burkart’s son.

“I kind of started coming for fun,” she said. “Then I got a true understanding of everything, and it just became really interesting.”

A Family Tradition

Volunteer firefighting isn’t just passed from one generation to the next in Yoder.

It’s often passed around the dinner table.

Burkart’s wife left this week for a federal wildfire assignment in Colorado. Robert Shade serves alongside daughter Alyssa.

“There are families on the department,” Shade said. “Husbands and wives, fathers and sons, fathers and daughters.”

For him, volunteering alongside Alyssa is one of the most rewarding parts of the job.

“It’s a lot of fun to go out with Alyssa and do what we both love,” he said.

The work isn’t without sacrifice.

“When the pager goes off, you could be at a dinner with your family,” Burkart said. “You could be at your kid’s birthday party. You could be at a track event for your kids.”

And the sacrifice isn’t limited to firefighters.

“It’s not only the members that have to make that sacrifice,” he said. “It’s also the family.”

When firefighters deploy on federal assignments, the department still has to answer calls at home.

“We do have a lot of members that deploy nationally, but we also have to protect home when they’re gone,” Burkart said.

That responsibility is shared with neighboring departments through mutual-aid agreements.

Last year alone, Yoder firefighters assisted neighboring agencies 26 times, while local farmers and ranchers helped firefighters cut fire lines during large grass fires.

Yoder’s firefighters have built something much larger than a volunteer department.

They’ve built a pipeline to answer the call.

One generation trains the next.

Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.