It was fourth grade when the red mysterious trucks parked outside my school. These enigmatic men climbed out with suits on that made them look alien. As a child, I saw it as a time when we could miss class and play around on the trucks with these mysterious people. I never thought seven years later I would be the person visiting my former elementary school. After the mysterious men visited my school, my eldest brother signed up at the volunteer fire department and started leaving at all times during the day. At night, I often lay awake wondering what he was up to. I would watch as the trucks would speed past my house with their lights on and my curiosity about their activities would ignite. I grew up helping my community through the events that I would participate in with my local Boy Scout troop. I saw how my brother was able to help our community through his participation in the fire department and I wanted to make the same impact. At the age of fifteen, I filled out the application and joined the Harwinton Volunteer Fire Department in Connecticut. As a young teenager, I did not yet know how my participation as a volunteer would change my world views. It was 2:33 a.m. when my pager toned on my nightstand. Still half asleep, I heard dispatch say those two fateful words, “structure fire”. My department had just been toned out for mutual aid to a three-alarm structure fire. I had just turned eighteen and was not yet certified as an interior firefighter. I was assigned to the tanker where I would help with water shuttle operations. That night each firefighter on scene fought their hardest, but as dawn broke the building was a total loss and over two dozen people had been displaced. As I was resting on a building’s steps with the rest of my department, apartment owners started to come thank us. These people had just lost everything and many of them only had bathrobes on, yet they still came to thank us for our hard work. Over the next few days, fire officials would be on the news saying that crews did everything they could but could not save the structure. The fire not only stole the building away from its residents but took the life of a brother firefighter who died of a preexisting condition on the scene that night. I was told that I did an exceptional job that night but I felt that I should have been doing more. As the apartment owners thanked me, my “you’re welcome” response felt half-hearted and helpless. My curiosity about my brother’s activities is what led me to become a volunteer firefighter but it had evolved into something more. I could no longer sit on the sidelines while others suffered. Last year, I graduated from fire one school with my firefighter one, hazmat awareness, and hazmat operations certifications. Even after graduating, I drive myself to train as hard as I can because the next time I tell someone, “I did everything I could” I want to have no regrets. I now see myself as a public servant where failure is not an option and I try to live my life according to the quote from former president John F. Kennedy, “My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” I volunteer so that I can help people when they are having one of the worst days of their lives.

It is a day that I would never forget, how could I? I was looking forward to it since I was a child. That day was when I responded to my very first structure fire and this is the picture afterward. It was Christmas morning and I had a gift in my hands waiting to open it, the anticipation was killing me. But that's when the tones went off and I heard those fateful words, "Harwinton Fire respond to a reported structure fire." I was only fifteen but at that time I felt that I could take on the world.