Some female firefighters struggle to prove their worth to mostly male co-workers. But no one ever questioned Lt. Brenda Cowan's ability, fellow firefighters said last night.

"Brenda is one of those that you never heard that about," firefighter paramedic Eugene McCain said. "She would go anywhere and do anything."

Cowan, Lexington's first black female firefighter, died yesterday while responding to a domestic violence call at 8645 Adams Lane.

Co-workers, relatives and friends remembered her as a deeply religious woman and a onetime "Little Sister" at the University of Kentucky's Wildcat Lodge, helping team members with things like laundry -- and baking the occasional cookies.

She was the sister of Fred Cowan, a member of UK's 1978 national championship team.

Former UK basketball star Kenny "Sky" Walker said Brenda Cowan was part of his UK "family," a friend he often played spades with late into the night.

"This was when we didn't have anything; we were just having fun," Walker said. "It was a close-knit little group."

Cowan, who was recently promoted to lieutenant and received her badge this week, was one of the first firefighters to respond yesterday to the call that a woman had been shot. Firefighters responded because they also work as emergency medical workers. Cowan was approaching the house when she was shot.

Cowan was taken to the University of Kentucky Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead at 5:35 p.m. She was 40.

"This is our worst nightmare," said Fire Chief Robert Hendricks. Firefighters are receiving counseling at Station 1 on Third Street.

Cowan became a Lexington firefighter in 1992. She was transferred to Station 18 in southern Fayette County about three weeks ago.

At the station last night, Cowan's white and black tennis shoes still sat where she left them, on the floor beside a desk. Her cell phone continued ringing an hour after her death, sending chills down the spines of co-workers.

Cowan's younger sister, Myrtle L. Cowan, said she had spent the entire week in Lexington with her sister. Cowan is originally from Sturgis, in Union County.

"She stayed all night with me in the hotel," Myrtle Cowan said last night from her Madi-son-ville home. "We were very close. She would do anything for anybody."

Myrtle Cowan said her sister was an active member of Consolidated Baptist Church in Lexington. "We believe in God," she said through tears. "That's what's holding us together."

Rev. Richard Gaines said Brenda Cowan was a member of his church's greeting and culinary ministries, and hosted the church's mother/daughter luncheon planning committee in her home Thursday night.

"You can't tell her story without saying that she loved her God," Gaines said. "Everything else in her life was a byproduct of that; she touched lives."

Cowan is the first female firefighter to die in the line of duty in Fayette County. She is the third firefighter to die on duty in Lexington. Robert Wayne Martin died after falling off a truck as it sped to a fire in 1986, and Charles Williams, Jr., was killed in a blaze in 1997.

Neighbors of Cowan on Whiteberry Drive, off Leestown Road, were distraught to hear of her death.

Cowan, who was single, was "the neighbor everybody would want," said Mike Stahl, who lived next door to Cowan.

Cowan and the Stahls would mow each others lawns, and she would bring the Stahl boys, Chris and Tyler, cookies and ice cream, he said.

"She was always smiling," said Sharon Stahl. "I can't believe she's not coming home."