The day after I shot the car fire, Paige Hulsey, a local girl who is a good friend and reporter with News 4 St Louis, KMOV station, hit me on Facebook and she told me that her producers really liked my videos, wondered if they could use them on the news for a story they had her working on. I let her know that was very possible, I would check with Sullivan Independent News Editor Jim Bartle and see if he was okay with it and let her know. Jim was okay with it and I let Paige know when she called later in the day with more information on the story they were working on…turned out they initially liked how I helped the lone firefighter with the car fire while taking photos and wanted to do a story on that…I told her that was something I had done for 38 years of the nearly 40 years I had been on the Sullivan Fire Department as a volunteer firefighter and it just came back to me naturally on what to do. She told me that they were working on another story, about the shortage of volunteer firefighters that supplement full time firefightrs in many fire departments surrounding the St Louis area and were interested in something to tie into that story. I told Paige that my videos would be such a short story that it really wouldn`t compliment her main story, but suggested she come out and interview Chief Eric about the outstanding Junior Firefighter Program that Sullivan Fire Department has, including the Junior Firefighter Academy that they host each summer, which is well attended by many junior firefighters from all around the state of Missouri. I checked with Chief Eric and he said he would be happy to talk to her about their program and put her in touch with him so they could begin to work on it soon. Paige said they would use my videos of the car fire later that day…they were on during the 10 pm broadcast…here is the link, I think they did a great job on the story, short and sweet just as I figured it would be !!
https://www.kmov.com/news/watch-photographer-puts-down-camera-to-help-put-out-car/article_378c96ca-45ff-11e9-8dd3-e3855fab331b.html