Oxford firefighter Amanda McBride traded her bulky boots for elegant ballroom shoes and flashing lights for the spotlight as she took part in a celebrity dance competition held Saturday night in Troy.

“I had so much fun. I was honestly not as nervous as I thought I was going to be,” she said.

McBride waltzed away with an award at the Dancing with the Stars (DTWS) fund-raiser for Faith in Action of Oakland County held at the San Marino Club.

Formed in December 2012, Faith in Action of Oakland County is a faith-based volunteer organization that provides essential non-medical assistance to low-income elderly folks and adults with disabilities.

Volunteer caregivers handle a variety of informal tasks including transportation to medical appointments and other places, shopping, errands, household chores, yard work, minor home repairs and assistance with personal record-keeping. They also provide friendly visits and respite for family caregivers.

“It’s an amazing charity,” said McBride, a 2005 graduate of Lake Orion High School.

“I was raised by my grandparents and my grandma actually lives with me now, so (the work done by Faith in Action) kind of touches my heart.”

McBride was one of nine dancers in the competition, six of whom were local celebrities. The other two were an Oakland County Sheriff’s deputy named Kristen Zdankiewicz and Edward Sudzina, a former captain and Ranger in the U.S. Army.

This year’s competition was meant to honor first-responders and those serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.

McBride started practicing with her partner/instructor Jim Everley at the Arthur Murray Dance Studio in Sterling Heights two months ago.

“We practiced once a week for the first month. And then, this last month, it was twice a week,” McBride said.

Prior to this, the only formal dance training she received was during her elementary school days when she took tap and jazz lessons.

Fortunately as an adult, she’s continued to dance for fun with her friends and at home with her two children, Camren, 10, and Addison, 7.

“I love dancing,” she said.

Performing in front of a crowd was a lot different than dancing at a local club or in your kitchen, but McBride didn’t let it get to her. She tuned out everyone around her.

“I treated it like it was practice,” she said. “I didn’t think about the people (watching). I just focused on Jim and did the moves.”

McBride didn’t expect to do as well as she did.

After dancing the Argentine Tango to Michael Buble’s “Cry Me a River,” she found herself in a tie with Zdankiewicz when it came to the judges’ scoring.

“We had to do a (freestyle) dance-off,” she said.

Zdankiewicz ended up winning the competition.

That didn’t surprise McBride because she and the sheriff’s deputy took lessons at the same studio.

“I watched her practice her routine,” she said. “Every time I watched her I thought she was going to win. She did so good. I would just watch her in awe.”

Prior to working in law enforcement, Zdankiewicz skated professionally for Disney on Ice as a chorus line performer touring the U.S., Canada and Japan. So, the fact that McBride was able to hold her own and go the distance was quite impressive.

“I was really surprised by how (well) I danced,” she said.

Although she didn’t win, McBride went home with the Linda Lee Young Memorial Award for having the highest combination of judges’ scores and audience votes.

The award is named for longtime WYCD-FM (99.5) radio personality Linda Lee Young, who passed away in March 2017 at the age of 55 following a seven-month battle with lung cancer. She served as a judge at the DWTS fund-raiser in 2015 and 2016.

McBride was grateful to fellow Oxford Fire Department members Chief Pete Scholz, Sgt. Kelly Kilgore, Joanne Edmonds and Ben Horton for attending the event and serving as her cheering section.

“I think they were more excited than I was,” she said. “That made me feel good.”

McBride’s comrades were very impressed by her moves.

“I was really proud to know her,” Edmonds said. “She looked beautiful and she did a wonderful job – really professional.”

“It was something completely different. I’ve never seen her take on this kind of challenge,” Edmonds noted. “But she’s game for anything. She’ll try anything. This was just a testament to her adventurous spirit . . . It really was great to see her in that environment. She’s obviously a natural.”

“I thought she did an excellent job,” Scholz said.

According to the chief, performing in a dance competition seemed out of character for McBride as she’s “generally not one that likes to be in the limelight” and is “very quiet, normally.”

“For her to come forward in that kind of a setting and do as great a job as she did was rather exciting,” Scholz said. “She did phenomenal.”

When she’s not dancing, McBride enjoys serving the community as a paid-on-call firefighter/Emergency Medical Technician (EMT). She’s been with the department since December 2014.

“There wasn’t a day that went by during the (fire) academy that I wasn’t sure that this was what I wanted to do,” she said. “I change my mind about everything. I get bored easily. But I’ve never gotten bored or changed my mind about this.”