Caroline Paul

Caroline Paul (born July 29, 1963 in New York City) is an American writer of fiction and nonfiction. She was raised in Connecticut (her father was an investment banker, her mother a social worker), and educated in journalism and documentary film at Stanford University. She worked as a journalist at Berkeley public radio station KPFA before (in 1988) joining the San Francisco Fire Department, as one of the first women hired by the department. She worked most of her career on Rescue 2, where she and her crew were responsible for search and rescue in fires. Rescue 2 members were also trained and sent on scuba dive searches, rope and rappelling rescues, surf rescues, confined space rescues, all hazardous material calls, and the most severe train and car wrecks.

Her first book was the nonfiction memoir Fighting Fire, published in 1998. Her second, the 2006 historical novel East Wind, Rain is based on the Niihau Incident, a historical event in which a Japanese pilot crash-landed on the private Hawaiian island of Niihau, after the attack on Pearl Harbor. "East Wind, Rain" is currently being developed into a feature film.

She is a member of the San Francisco Writers' Grotto, a workspace co-operative that also includes Po Bronson, Tom Barbash, Stephen Elliott, Peter Orner, ZZ Packer, Jason Roberts, Ethan Watters and B. Ruby Rich.

Her identical twin sister is Baywatch actress Alexandra Paul. Together, the two sisters occupied a single slot on People Magazine's list of "50 Most Beautiful People" for 1997. Her younger brother Jonathan Paul is a militant animal rights activist; he is currently serving a four year sentence in federal prison for the 1997 arson of a slaughterhouse in Redmond, Oregon.

Caroline flies ultralights and paragliders. An accomplished athlete, she has competed on the U.S. National Luge Team in trials for the Olympics.