1. What do you miss most about the fire service?

   The morning conference calls. Joking aside I miss the bond you feel seeing your brothers and sisters at work. The down time sitting around the table eating , laughing, joking, and solving the worlds problems.

2. If you knew what you know now when you started your career, what advice would you give to new firefighters?

   The fire service is constantly changing so you need to evolve with it and adapt. You can’t get complacent. Always keep this in mind “It’s not what you did yesterday but what can you do today that really matters”.

3. What was the worst fire you experienced with Tracy? Why?

   Any fire that you had that you think you could have done better. No one fire in particular stands out. Always try to learn from the last one to do better at the next one. Now that I think about it more one does stand out in my mind. One afternoon in the winter of 2013. A single story residential fire on Lincoln near Grantline Rd. The last fire I responded too.

4. What building(s) in Tracy was “the one fire” you hope you never had to face and why?
   There were two properties that really concerned me: one commercial and one apartment building.
   Legitt and Platt on MacArthur. The reason was the yard was always cluttered with trucks and trailers which made access challenging at times. The business ground up old matresses to make carpet padding. The place usually was dirty and had problems. Went to a few small fires there. What I feared was a big fire with employees trapped. The product burned sooty black and hung in the air when cooled. Zero visibility. Getting trapped in there and running out of air was always a high risk for firefighters.
   An apartment complex just south of Fire Admin. I believe it did have a fire after I retired and may not be there now. This place had a lot of bad features for its residents. Multiple story with old wooden fire escapes directly next to windows from some apartments. The right fire and those escapes would be a blow torch.

5. Looking back on your career, who did you identify as a mentor that you looked up to and why?

   I had a few mentors in my career. I was from the old school breed and really looked up to two Tracy Captains. I always hoped I could be half the firefighter they were. William Larimer and Jim Oliveira. These guys and seen and done it all.

6. Please share a funny or humorous “fire story” with today’s Tracy Firefighters.

Here’s one from the archives. Early in my career I responded solo, yes i said solo to a medical call in a very large Mobile Home Park. I was driving a 1973 Peterbuilt Fire Engine. These were 10 speed with a fuller road range shifter. You had to double clutch them. After pulling out of the station and talking on the radio I had my microphone cord wrapped around the steering column. While driving you had to find the mobile home space on a map. This mobile home park had speed bumps. There were no print outs in those days just audio from dispatch. I got inside the park near the location and hit a speed bump. All the map pages went flying along with the space number I wrote down. I arrived at the space I thought I had written down. Nobody answered the door and it was unlocked so I entered. I made my way to the bedroom where I could hear moaning sounds. To the couples surprise here i was. I was in the wrong mobile home. It was the one next to it. Off by one. Luckily the couple were good sports and after the call was over they meant me outside before i returned to the station and we all got a good laugh.