Preston firefighter and football trailblazer celebrated in New Year's honours

Lindsay Sielski, from Preston, was awarded a British Empire Medal for bringing life-saving dogs to the Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service, while Sheila Parker, from Chorley, was awarded an MBE for her services to women's football and charity.

LINDSAY SIELSKI

Crew manager Lindsay, 37, joined the Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service in 2004. In 2016, she moved away from the front lines to focus on dog handling, and eventually took a leading role in the introduction of 'fire dogs' to assist in searches for the approximately 942 high-risk people who go missing in the county each year.

She said: "I have always been interested in dogs. I competed in agility shows and I used to breed my own dogs in the past, so when the opportunity came up to be a dog handler, even though it was just a voluntary role, I jumped at the chance.

"I went to UCLAN and studied the use of dogs in detection alongside the technology we had, and the more I learned the more I wanted to trial them, until we got to the stage where we are now."

As a dog handler, Lindsay provided missing persons training for the fire service with the help Lancashire police, and shared her expertise with other fire and rescue services across the country.

She even adopted her own dog, Davey B, from the Dogs Trust in Shoreham, who later qualified as an international search and rescue dog, able to gain access to buildings deemed too small or unsafe for humans.

She also secured a £40,000 sponsorship deal with pet food brand, Purina, to help with cost of keeping the dogs, and in November 2019 she became the national co-ordinator for the group.

She said: "They are amazing animals. The more you work with them the more you realise just how good they are at what they do. The results they bring is something like we have never seen in the past, whether that's locating evidence to catch arsonists, or locating casualties.

"We have had a number of structural collapses this year and we were very quickly able to establish that there was nobody inside so we didn't have to risk firefighters' lives, and in other cases we have managed to locate trapped people very quickly.

"I can't put into words how rewarding working with the dogs is. We work very much as a team but the dogs are so competent at what they do and seeing them work is lovely, knowing we have taught them to do that. It makes it all worthwhile."

SHEILA PARKER

Lifelong athlete Sheila Parker, 74, signed for the Kerr’s Ladies Football Club of Preston in 1960, aged just 13.

Three years later she signed for Fodens - defying a 42-year FA ban on women playing football on affiliated pitches. As captain, she led the team to victory in the English Knock Out Competition Final of 1969, versus Westhorn United of Scotland.

She said: "Things were different back then. There wasn't as much football being played those days. Of course we had the men's teams playing weekly on the‘rec’ (recreation park) at Chorley, and I used to go and watch them.

"I just started kicking a ball around and joined in with the lads, and it went from there.

"Put it this way, they welcomed me to their side."

In 1972, Sheila captained the first ever WFA England side in a 3-2 win over Scotland - the first official international match between the two sides - and her team remained undefeated throughout the whole of 1973.

Throughout her 12-year sporting career, Sheila play under four England managers - Eric Worthington, John Adams, Tommy Tranter and Martin Reagan - and held the captain spot until 1976. In her club career, she signed for Preston North End Ladies FC in 1975, scoring 51 goals in 14 games to win the Division One Championship.

She retired internationally in May 1984 after securing second place in the inaugural UEFA Finals for women, losing to Sweden.

The grandma-of-three said: "It was a great surprise, in a nice way, to get something for doing something you enjoy.

"Football was always something that I loved doing. I used to like flay tackling - though I did get the ball, not the other player's foot - as well as heading, attacking and shooting.

"There's a lot more women footballers now. It's a whole different world. I still enjoy football as a sport, I think it's a good sport played well, and I enjoy watching the teams playing the ball forward... and not backwards as some teams seem to do."

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