FIREHOUSE ROAD

Ann Steimle, Firefighter
Lumberland Fire Department, Firefighter

Years of service: 29

Occupation: Director of Student Support, Health and Safety, The Homestead School

 

When Steimle’s young son stopped breathing, a volunteer firefighter saved his life. It was 1986 and, she said, “I knew it was my future.” 

A few years later Steimle walked into the fire department and signed up. The hardest part? “Wanting to know everything, all of it,” but needing to pace herself so she could “learn it all and learn it well.”

Learn it well she did, and there have been countless calls since, working alongside firefighters and EMTs who came running when her boy needed them.

“I have been able to join the ranks of the folks I admire the most,’ she says. “I get to make a difference.”

One call, though, stands out among them all. It was a car wreck, and a mom was trapped in the twisted metal, her kids in the backseat. Steimle was among the first responders who cut her free of the crushed car. And although the crash was a bad one, the woman’s story ends well.

“She lived,” Steimle says, “She lived to parent those two children.”