The James Avery keychain on Dallas Fire Department Deputy Chief Cristian Hinojosa’s ’96 ring is worn smooth now, the engraving almost gone. He carries it everywhere.
It was a gift from a young mother he once helped bring back to life, a woman he first met lying pulseless beside her baby’s crib in a small home in Lake Highlands.
Her husband had called 911 in a panic.
Hinojosa and his team from Engine 28 worked in practiced silence—compressions, medications, intubation—until somewhere on the way to the hospital, she started breathing again.
By the time they reached the hospital, the woman who had been clinically dead was breathing again.
The keychain doesn’t look like much anymore, but he keeps it as a reminder of the night everything he believes about service crystallized.
It wasn’t always like this.
Hinojosa used to chase paychecks. At 21, he worked in finance, pulling 80-hour weeks and managing accounts in a world of numbers and deadlines. On paper, it looked like success, but each day left him feeling hollow, like he was watching life pass by through a spreadsheet.
“I had virtually no time for family or friends,” Hinojosa said. “Externally, did it look like I was successful? Maybe on the outside. Could I buy nice things and go to the good restaurants and take an occasional luxury trip? Sure. Did I feel fulfilled? No. I had what I call my golden handcuffs.”
Hinojosa thought it was New York and that, maybe, he would feel better if he went back home. A year into the same job in Dallas, he was still miserable.
He still woke up with the same empty pit in his stomach, asking himself why he felt so wrong.
One morning, sitting in his car in the parking lot of the Bank of America tower, he found himself stalling to avoid going up the elevator and into work.
“I remember driving around the parking lot before going into work and thinking to myself, ‘Just one more song on the radio. I’m just gonna listen to one more song,’” Hinojosa said. “And it slowly turned into ‘I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to start this day again.’”
That was the moment he finally called his dad.
Hinojosa still remembers how anxious he was before that call. He remembers how much he wanted his father to be proud of him, to see that he was choosing something meaningful and fulfilling.
He assumed that his dad wouldn’t understand why he, someone with an Amherst degree and a six-figure job on Wall Street, would walk away.
But the response surprised him. His father, a seasoned advertising executive, listened quietly and then asked just one question.
Is this something that will make you happy?
On Oct. 19, 2005, Hinojosa walked into the Dallas Fire Academy, no longer an assistant vice president but a 28-year-old rookie. The pay cut was steep, but the trade-off felt worth it.
“My quality of life, my fulfillment, my purpose, went through the roof,” Hinojosa said. “And I remember I got to the Fire Academy, and I put that uniform on, and I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, like, I just hit the jackpot. I just hit the job jackpot.’”
And the first time he put on the uniform, he felt something he hadn’t felt in years: excitement, purpose and alignment.
Since that phone call, Hinojosa spent 20 years serving the city in his uniform, on the ladder truck, in the ambulance, on Engine 28 and eventually in leadership roles. The feeling of fulfillment never faded. Every new year became the best year of his career.
As time passed, Hinojosa has reflected further on his time at Bank of America.
“(At Bank of America) I was on somebody else’s ladder, thinking that it was my own ladder,” Hinojosa said. “And I was climbing rings that were a construct of what I thought I was supposed to be doing.” Even though his true passions lied elsewhere, Hinojosa concedes that even the years he spent as an investment banker helped to shape his firefighting career.
“I haven’t worked a day in 20 years because I found joy,” Hinojosa said. ““Had (I not worked in corporate finance), I wouldn’t have the appreciation that I have today, for, where I’m at professionally, and as a result of where I’m at professionally, where I am personally.”
The trust, the camaraderie and the shared mission grounded him in a way no corporate job ever had. Instead of the dread he once felt in the Bank of America parking lot, he found himself looking forward to going into to work.
As he moved from firefighter to paramedic to battalion chief and eventually to deputy chief, that feeling only deepened. He saw firsthand how a well-trained cohesive crew could change the trajectory of someone’s worst day. Leading people who carried that responsibility and watching them grow into their own sense of purpose became its own reward.
“We rely on each other,” Hinojosa said. “ We are a team. And we’re not just a team in battle, but we’re a team when we come back and we support each other.”
The work gave him more than a sense of purpose—it gave him a family. In the academy and on every step that followed, he found a brotherhood and sisterhood that made even the hardest days feel meaningful.
And every now and then, something pulls him back to that night in Lake Highlands. Not a call log or an award, but the small James Avery keychain hanging from his keyring. The details are nearly gone now, worn smooth from years of being handled between calls and conversations.
He still notices its weight.
It reminds him of the young mother who walked into the station months after her cardiac arrest, her children in her arms, gratitude written across her face.
It reminds him why the work matters. Why he traded a window office on the sixty-fourth floor of a seventy-one story building for a uniform. Why he still feels that alignment two decades later.
“As I start in this 21st year, I’ll drive in, and I’ll be excited,” Hinojosa said. “And it’ll be the new best year.”