The recipient of the 2022 Center for Public Safety Excellence (CPSE) Ray Picard Award is Senior Management Analyst Norma Jean Valdez of the Los Alamos County Fire Department, a CFAI Accredited Agency.

Valdez is the one person in the entire world selected this year to receive this prestigious award. Nominated by Los Alamos Fire Chief Troy Hughes, she is the first woman, Hispanic and New Mexican ever to receive this award. Valdez serves as a champion of the accreditation process, both in New Mexico and beyond, and exemplifies the spirit of Ray Picard in receiving this award.

“The first civilian to ever receive this award … it was my honor to nominate such a deserving individual,” Chief Hughes said. “Norma is good to her core and a true role model for how to live your life in service to others. I am ever grateful to call her my friend. Beyond deserving of this recognition.”

Valdez has been involved with accreditation since the beginning, when Los Alamos was selected as a beta site for the accreditation process. According to one of her colleagues, she has since been continually a part of the department’s accreditation, having “vision, dedication, heart, balance, determination, and the desire for continuous improvement to keep LAFD’s accreditation quest alive and striving, always being the one to carry that torch towards success.”

In 2000, the Commission on Fire Accreditation International (CFAI) established the Ray Picard Award. It was designed to recognize Chief Picard’s vision in pioneering quality improvement for the fire and emergency service. Chief Picard was one of the earliest champions of the self-assessment and accreditation process that has led to a culture and paradigm shift within the fire service.

This award is presented to an individual who exemplifies the ability, character, dedication, leadership, and visionary attributes Chief Picard exhibited. The individual personifies Chief Picard’s contributions and exceptional leadership to the CFAI and the accreditation of fire service organizations.

“I had a great mentor in the early days,” Valdez said. “Then LAFD Fire Chief Douglas MacDonald (Chief Mac) was one of the members of the initial accreditation think tank. He saw something in me and he saw that I loved the thought of making things better.

Chief Hughes has supported all the work Valdez and her colleagues have done, she said.

“He knows that I won’t settle for good enough. I wanted to try new things, new approaches and find new opportunities to be more efficient and provide a higher level of service to our customers,” she said. “He offered me opportunities to learn about the accreditation model by allowing me to jump right in and see what we discovered. I am fortunate that I was given the latitude to take my ideas of continuous improvement and run with them. I earned great respect from my leadership and colleagues in the fire service by taking a collaborative approach – admitting, with humility, that I was simply a worker bee committed to making a difference.”

Valdez said that she recognized early on that she doesn’t know all there is to know about everything, but she does know people who do.

“I am very resourceful,” she said. “In fact, one of my favorite quotes from Saint Mother Teresa is, “I can do things you cannot. You can do things I cannot. Together we can do great things.”

“I recognized that everyone has expertise in one thing or another – and I tapped into it. I solicited advice, assistance, guidance and education in all areas, and through that effort, I rallied participation and buy-in,” she said. “When appointed as the Accreditation Manager in 2009, I accepted with such excitement and passion. I knew that my passion and dedication would guide me. I am not afraid to work hard – to admit I don’t know something – to persevere in spite of challenges and to be sincerely grateful for others who journey with me.”

Valdez is handing the AM responsibility to Xavier Anderson. She will remain active in the accreditation process and continue to work with departments interested in the accreditation process.

Valdez added that in the 25 years since Los Alamos became accredited, she is proud to have been part of the department’s continuous improvement evolution, “and to have contributed to ideas and practices that give us the ability to claim performance excellence and yet acknowledge that there is always opportunity to get better.”

Valdez has participated in five accreditation cycles and served as AM in the 2010, 2015 and 2020 Los Alamos accreditation cycles. She also participated in eight site visits including, Columbus, GA; Mountain View, Colo., Grand Rapids, MI; Quantico, VA; Loveland, Colo.; Johnson City, TN; Santa Clara, CA and Fayetteville, NC.

She and Anderson directly assisted outside agencies with their accreditation process including Farmington, Bernalillo County and Albuquerque as well as DOE’s Y-12 and Pantex and Johnson County, Kan., and many others indirectly by sharing tools that Los Alamos has created.

Valdez also has served as chair of the New Mexico Fire Protection Grant Council for 12 years, a member of the New Mexico Fire Service Professional Standards Commission for 4 years, New Mexico Governor’s Blue Ribbon Commission on the future of the fire service in New Mexico for 2 years.

“I started in the New Mexico State Fire Marshal’s Office in 1981 as a statistician,” Valdez said. “I joined LAFD in 1992 as an administrative specialist and retired for a bit in 2007, then returned to LAFD in 2009 as a management analyst and accreditation manager.”

Her community service includes the Little League Board, Parish Finance Council member, Coordinator of Church Youth and Adult Ministries. She has been married for 35.5 years and has eight grandchildren.

Valdez served on the team that received two Quality New Mexico Piñon Awards; one in 1995 and again in 1996 for a commitment to utilizing systematic processes to attain improved overall outcomes. Quality New Mexico is a multi-tiered assessment and awards process assisting New Mexico organizations along their path to achieving and sustaining performance excellence.

She and her peers received the Department of Energy Medal of Valor for work during the 2001 Cerro Grande Fire, New Mexico’s largest wildfire at the time, which destroyed more than 400 homes. Her work was administrative and was performed in the Tactical Operations Center.