FDNY Firefighter Meets Iraq War Vet He Helped Save

Michael McCauley had only been a firefighter for a few months when he saved a life — and he didn’t even have to run into a burning building to do it, reports NY Daily News.

The 26-year-old Staten Island resident was told in 2013 that he was a match for a leukemia patient in desperate need of a bone-marrow transplant.

On Wednesday, he will finally meet the mystery recipient — Aaron Faulkner, a 33-year-old Iraq War veteran and father of two from Pittsburgh, at a special reception at FDNY headquarters in Brooklyn.

“I went a long time without hearing anything,” said McCauley, who works out of Engine 242 in Bay Ridge. “I wasn’t sure whether or not it helped.”

Faulkner, a former Marine now studying to be a pastor, was a student at Geneva College in Pennsylvania when he started to feel pains and exhaustion. He thought the blood test he took in March 2013 would reveal he had an annoying case of mononucleosis – not acute myeloid leukemia.

“I thought I was just out of shape, but it kept getting worse and worse,” recalled Faulkner, who was immediately hospitalized following the test.

Like many firefighters, McCauley signed up for the New York Blood Center’s bone-marrow registry as a probie – a fateful decision that set in motion a whirlwind of tests and hospital visits that led to Faulkner’s donation in October 2013.

He was one of three matches found for Faulkner – and determined to be the best donor.

“I was like, OK, let’s get started,” said McCauley, a former FDNY emergency medical technician who comes from a long line of firefighters.

He received shots for a week and then spent close to 10 hours over a two-day period to donate.

Read more of the story here http://nydn.us/1wIP4dR

Rick Lasky, Scott Thompson, Curtis Birt, and John Salka

Humpday Hangout: The Right Firehouse Attitude

In this Humpday Hangout, Rick Lasky and the rest of the crew talk putting the firefighter back in the firefighter and the firehouse back in…
WTH health program

Senators Decry Cuts to World Trade Center Health Program

U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand issued a joint letter demanding that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reverse cuts that impacted the World Trade Center…