Excerpt:
Firefighters make it their careers to help people during threatening and critical situations.
Some here in the metro even take that service beyond their time on the job, and into their personal lives.
One local firefighter, Drew Gerken, started collecting furniture years ago after assisting a family who had nothing. “I asked one of the children, ‘Where do you sleep?’ and he said ‘We pile up our clothes, and lay on our clothes, and cover up with those,” Gerken says.