Employee Bulletin

Applause
FDNY Family Portraits:
Barbara A. Mollica
Barbara A. Mollica’s title, Associate
Retirement Benefits Examiner/Seminar
Coordinator, in the
FDNY’s Pension Bureau, indicates
she helps uniformed members
through the retirement process.
But she knows her role as
bigger than that.
“My favorite part of the job is
dealing with the members, helping
them out,” she said. “They’re going
through a tough time – a transition
– and I’m their advocate.”
This fighting spirit was instilled
almost at birth.
Barbara said she
was born with her
lower legs turned
backwards. She had
surgery, but her
parents were told she probably would never
walk. Yet she defied the odds and took
her first steps just before age 2.
She grew up not far from FDNY Headquarters,
the youngest of six girls. Her father,
who worked on the docks and drove a limousine,
was the disciplinarian of the family;
while her mother, who ran a candy store
and worked as a bookkeeper, was gentler.
“Our father’s strictness and hardworking
personality made all of us very tenacious,
strong-minded and determined to succeed in
everything,” she said. “While our mother’s
warm nature taught us to have compassion.”
As a young adult, she lived with her sister in
New Jersey, before moving back to Brooklyn
a few years later to marry and start a family.
Barbara had a son and daughter – Erik and
Kristen — and she credits them for helping
her find her passion.
“I was told I was a strong advocate for
them,” she said. “And it’s carried through
my life.”
Her fighting spirit was tested through the
years, as she endured several surgeries
before joining the FDNY, one of which
disabled her for more than a year. But she
continued pushing to ensure her children
had a bright future.
When she was in her 40s, she decided to
begin a new chapter in her life and go back
to school. She earned an associate degree
in liberal arts from Kingsborough Community
College and was then accepted into a
bachelor’s and master’s degree honors program
at John Jay College of Criminal Justice,
with a focus on forensic psychology.
Family issues forced her to stop just short
of graduating from John Jay, but the
knowledge and experience stuck with her.
So when her children were teenagers, she
reached out to a former professor at Kingsborough,
explaining she was “a little
bored” and wanted to try something new.
It was suggested she come back to the
school to work part-time as an advocate
for special needs students.
She jumped at the opportunity. And the
role required her to do anything necessary
to help the young adults, including
tutoring and attending classes to help
students with physical or visual impairments
take notes.
“It was great to know I was helping them,
and enabled me to take classes I never got
to take when I was a student,” she said.
Barbara spent more than three years in
that role, before moving on to bookkeeping
jobs in the private sector. It was then
she realized working in government
would allow her to
continue her advocacy and
work full-time.
Her life-long love of math and
experience with statistics led her to take the
City’s Assistant Retirement Benefits Examiner
exam. She earned the eighth spot on the
list and was hired by the FDNY in 2004.
For the last 12 years she has planned monthly
retirement seminars for fire officers and
firefighters, updated their beneficiary information,
calculated their excess and first
pension checks, among many other tasks.
“The phone never stops ringing, but it
keeps me going,” she said.
She works one-on-one with many members,
often serving as a sympathetic ear for those
who struggle with what to do next. And
whether she is encouraging a retiring member
to volunteer or updating and notarizing
their paperwork, she has one goal in mind –
to be their advocate.
“It can be a hard time for them,” she said.
“I just try to make things a
little easier. They put their
lives on the line for us every 5
day, so they deserve it.”