CENTRAL FALLS, RI — Most 4-year-old boys love fire trucks, but most 4-year-old boys don't get to make the fire department their playground.

With a Central Falls firefighter for a dad, AJ Brown has grown up at the fire station on Illinois Street. The firefighters there admit they're all family.

"We work 24 hours here. We do everything together," Union President Lt. John Garvey said. "Not only the fire aspect of it and EMS aspect of it, but we live together, we cook meals together, we train together, all of that. It's a home away from home."

So they all felt the gut punch when AJ's parents, Josh and Danielle Brown, got a diagnosis that was three years in the making.

"I remember calling the pediatrician, telling him what was going on and he said, 'You've got to get him to Hasbro and get h

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