(NAPSI)—Joseph Maruca didn’t exactly mean to join the volunteer fire service. It was April 1977, and the then high school senior had gone to the hardware store to purchase cement for footings on his family’s deck. As he was arriving, he saw smoke coming up from behind a restaurant across the street.

Maruca did what many people would do—he went over to see what was going on. What he didn’t expect was for a firefighter to call over to him that he needed his help. “He handed me the nozzle to the red booster hose and told me to drag it into the woods following the hose already on the ground, and hand it to the firefighters I would find,” recalls Maruca. “I did it.”

When he returned, the firefighter who originally called out to him asked him for additional assistance to help put out the brush

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