Over the past week, 67 members of California Urban Search and Rescue Task Force-2 -- an elite search and rescue team out of the Los Angeles County Fire Department -- have worked around the clock in Mexico City helping the city recover from the devastating 7.1-magnitude earthquake.

Two women are on the team. One of them is 36-year-old Capt. Sara Rathbun, a communications specialist.

"That means gadgets," she says.

In other words, it means making sure the rescue team has functioning radios and setting up satellite internet, among a whole lot of other responsibilities. But don't mistake Rathbun for a gadget geek. She's also trained as a rescue worker -- that's what she did after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan -- and as a medical specialist, which she worked as after the 2015 earthquake in Nepal.

Rathbun has been breaking stereotypes for a long time.

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As a high school senior in Los Angeles County, she went to pick up her younger brother from football practice. The coach invited her to join the team.

"And I said, 'You would mess yourself if I came out here. What a nightmare for you.' And he said, ‘No, if you’re really interested. I’ve seen you. You’re an athlete. You’ve been out on the track. I see you pole vaulting and doing soccer and stuff. I’d love to have you.'"

So she joined the team as a cornerback, tackling the opposing teams' wide receivers.

Sara Rathbun on the football team. (Courtesy of Sara Rathbun)

Rathbun’s parents raised her to believe she could do anything she wanted to. But she says it wasn’t until she saw a woman rappelling out of a helicopter with her paramedic bag that it all clicked.

That image led her to join the Los Angeles Fire Department and eventually Task Force-2, one of the elite search-and-rescue teams the U.S. government sends around the world to provide assistance after a disaster. Rathbun calls it the “best job in the world.”

Rathbun says being a woman on the team has its challenges. For example, some cultures aren’t comfortable with a female rescue worker, in which case she willingly takes a behind-the-scenes role (not the case in Mexico).

But being a woman also has its benefits. Rathbun says children in crisis often gravitate toward female figures. And there's the fact that her team sees some terrible things.

"What is ironic is I have more tools to deal with it than perhaps the men do, because they are in a position where it is not socially acceptable for them to show as much emotion as it is for me,” she says.

Captain Sara Rathbun on the job. — Capt. Sara Rathbun on the job. (Courtesy Sara Rathbun)

Just as it was the woman rappelling out of a helicopter that inspired Rathbun, she hopes other women will be inspired by her example.

California Task Force-2 is packing up to head home to Los Angeles this week. Until the next time they get called out.

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