My first time meeting Tim, all I saw was a fresh-faced, starry-eyed, innocent boy who gazed with wonder at the fire coming towards him. I saw my fair share of them, the kids that wanted to be firefighters because it was "cool" and was a "chick magnet," and the ones that wanted to get paid for sliding down a metal pole. I was even one of those kids myself way back in '83. Tim quickly showed me that he was different. He was the first recruit at the academy and the last one to leave every day. He breezed through all of the performance and written tests with ease. In a process that usually took recruits over half of a year, Tim graduated into the real world within two months. At 19, he donned his first firefighter jacket and hard-hat.

After his graduation from the academy, Tim was assigned to my team. It was only then that I was able to witness his greatness. It was Tim's first mission with us, and he was three shades more red than usual. Despite his off-the-charts testing, the butterflies got to him the same way they got to all of us. I was a rising star within the fire department at the time. I knew the Williamsburg neighborhood, community, and people like the back of my hand. Perhaps most importantly, I knew where all of the hydrants in my area were. My crew and I were tight-knit, forged together by the years of five am wake up drills, but none of our drills and procedures could have taught us how to act like Tim.

It was only his third day out of the academy when the bell rang, and we had to rush the truck to the site of the fire. It felt like we were practically dragging Tim along with us; he was still having some trouble adjusting to the randomness of a firefighter's work hours. Our sirens blared as we whizzed down the dark Brooklyn streets towards Bedford and South 3rd, and I remember yelling directions to Tim as he sat towards the back of the truck. His face was so pale that you would have thought he saw a ghost. Once we arrived at the fire, my team piled out of the truck, scrambling towards our positions. My team and I worked together as we always had. Two of us attached the hose to the hydrant, two of us held and aimed the hose, one directed traffic, and the last one scouted the building to find anybody in danger. Tim was on scout duty for any people still trapped in the building. The fire was beginning to taper off, and everything was going according to plan, until the flames burst back to life, somehow bigger and bolder than before. That was when I heard the scream from inside the building. A woman and her baby were stuck on the 6th floor with the window closed. Immediately, Tim bolted into the burning building with no regard for anything happening around him. He went in without an oxygen mask and seemed to disappear into the building for an eternity, ignoring the orders I frantically barked at him from outside. We continued to spray water over the fire, to no avail, and Tim was still missing in the depths of the building.

About five minutes later, Tim stumbled out of the burning building with the mother and child in his arms. He fell onto the ground, coughing and breathing heavily. It was against all protocol to do what Tim had done, but that family would not be alive without Tim. He put his life on the line to help others, knowing it would get him in trouble. For his heroic efforts, the fire department gave him a three-week unpaid suspension and forced him to take another written test about field protocol to be reinstated. I guess that's what saving lives got you back then, how ironic. Still, it was the most heroic action I have ever seen in my entire career as a firefighter. So today, twenty years later, I still remember what Tim did and try to live up to what he did because I want to try and be a hero. I became a firefighter because I wanted to help people and be a hero, but I did not honestly know the definition of a hero until I saw Tim save that family from the burning building. He went on to teach me more that night then I taught anyone throughout my entire career. Despite all the years passed that have tainted and distorted my memory, adding and subtracting pieces of the puzzle, I will never forget what Tim did that warm, humid July night. I can still vividly remember it. It seems like it was only yesterday sometimes.