BELLAIRE • MEMORIAL • RIVER OAKS • TANGLEWOOD • WEST UNIVERSITY

Student Firefighter for the City of Southside Place

By Sophia Li, St. John's School, School Buzz Editor | October 11, 2016

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Sophia Li, a senior at St. John's School, is a firefighter for the City of Southside Place.

My junior year of high school, I officially became a firefighter for the City of Southside Place. The road to victory was paved with labor-intensive tasks. I spent weekend afternoons in ninety-degree weather conducting maintenance tests on the fire engines. I tore several muscles while learning how to operate a K-12 saw. I’m pretty sure I still hold the department record for the most times someone has tripped in the fire station.

My firefighter assessment took six hours. After taking Part I of the test, I got home at one in the morning only to wake up at eight the next morning to take Part II. Fortunately, I passed.

My car’s trunk used to hold all of my soccer equipment. Now it’s filled to the brim with my bunker gear.

As a firefighter for Southside Place (although I do respond to calls in West U and Bellaire as well), I get to partake in a lot of community activities. Each year, the department participates in the “Fill the Boot” fundraiser for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, in which all of us firefighters stand at an intersection and hold out a boot for passing cars to put money into. This year, we raised over five thousand dollars in just four hours. More recently, the department helped out in Southside’s inaugural “Color Run.” While we didn’t do any of the running, we cheered runners on and stayed after the marathon ended to hose down the powder-covered streets.

Every now and then, I get questioned on why I, as a high school student, decided to become a firefighter. The official reason is: I didn’t want to study for mid-terms. This response usually gets a good laugh out of the other person. But the truth is: a while back, I created a personal mission statement, which listed everything I was going to do before I died.

Being a firefighter was one of them.

The Southside community has been so kind to me. Residents come over to the department with food and snacks each week. During training nights, children bike past the station and wave. CVS even provides free flu shots. So fighting fires for my community… I mean, it’s the least I can do.