On an October Wednesday back in 2018, my friend and a fellow long-time journalist visited with me to talk about one of her many ideas. The woman is full of them, this lady named Sandra Clark. Her latest and great idea that day was about her new online journalistic baby, KnoxTNToday. Her idea involved my joining her team.

I was available as an old, retired journalist after 35 years in the daily newspaper world. Sandra already had the idea sketched out on a layout sheet. That conversation and a few others plus emails in between led to a weekly labor of love column that, six years later, I still write – “Our Town Heroes.” It’s doubtful either of us envisioned that, six years down the road, I’d still be turning out Our Town Hero stories.

My story last Monday about John Sharbel of the Knoxville Fire Dept. (KFD) was the 300th I have written about our emergency first-responders working for one of these agencies – the Knoxville Police Dept. (KPD), Knox County Sheriff’s Office (KCSO), Rural Metro Fire, Knox County Rescue, the Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP), Seymour Volunteer Fire Dept., Loudon County Sheriff’s Office, Anderson County Sheriff’s Office, the Tennessee Dept. of Transportation (TDOT) Help Truck pros, AMR Ambulances, Blount County Sheriff’s Office and a few others along the way.

The purpose of Our Town Heroes is straightforward – to feature these professional public servants who bring to their jobs incredible skills, responsibilities and experiences that 99.9% of us want no part of doing. Let them do it. They deal with low pay, for the most part, strange schedules, the dangers they face, seeing things no one else wants to see – ever. Horrific accidents with fatalities. Being shot or shot at happens, maybe killing someone in the process, something etched in their psyche forever.

When a THP trooper pulls over an impaired driver going 100 mph that trooper may have just saved multiple lives, including that of the driver. When a police officer or sheriff’s deputy talks someone out of jumping off a bridge or putting down a weapon, that’s a hero in my book. And something that truly impacts our first-responder professionals at every agency and department is dealing with the death of a young child – in any situation you can imagine. Most have children of their own. It deeply hits home for them.

My interviews are not brief. Most take between 1½ to two hours, a few longer. I must say here – the willingness, patience and incredible cooperation these pros bring to the interviews is special, very special.

Many people have asked about my most memorable interviews and Hero stories. There are many. Here are a few I’ll share.

  • The most mesmerizing interview lasted three hours with Knox County Deputy Jordan Hurst, who was only 29 in 2020. Jordan was the first officer to arrive at the Pilot Travel Center at Strawberry Plains on the morning of April 7, 2020. A trucker had just murdered three people inside the store with a large knife and was walking in the parking lot when the deputy arrived. Jordan confronted the man, told him to stop and drop the knife. The man kept coming. When he was 15 to 20 feet away, Hurst fired three shots and killed him. He’ll never get over it. Here is his riveting story: KCSO’s Jordan Hurst: a hero at a massacre.
  • The alarm at KFD’s Headquarters Station sounded at 1:47 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 14, 2018. Now Retired Asst. Chief Robert Roche, then 57, was the first to arrive at the Morningside Hill Apartments, 2060 Dandridge Ave. Engines 1 and 6 were leaving previous calls and on the way. So, Roche, in his SUV, got there first. One woman was still inside her first-floor apartment. He looked through her kitchen window and saw her on the floor. In he went, crawling into a wall of thick black smoke. He felt for her and found her, choking for air. He rolled her onto his back, holding her wrists and arms around his neck, and crawled out with her. She survived with mild smoke inhalation. If you missed this story, here is a LINK to it: Assistant chief eyes circumstances, saves a life.
  • The very first Our Town Hero was John Whited, who was then deputy chief of what was then known as the Knoxville Volunteer Rescue Squad. He also was a full-time firefighter for Rural Metro Fire and a volunteer medic for the Knox County Sheriff’s Office. Today he’s still at Rural Metro as its division chief over special operations. Here is that first Our Town Hero story: Chief John Whited is almost a legend.

    Brian Rehg

  • And then there’s KCSO Motor Officer Brian Rehg. All he did was react in a nanosecond and catch a man in a mid-air jump over a bridge railing above I-640 and saved his life. That was on April 8, 2019. He was driving westbound on I-640 and noticed something odd. He looked up at a bridge above him. There, standing high on the bridge railing, was a man facing him. Rehg’s first thought: “Holy ^%^$!” Great story here: KCSO’s Brian Rehg: He caught a jumper in mid-air.
  • A few others…Meeting and getting to know Capt. Stacey Heatherly, who leads the THP’s Knoxville Division that covers nine East Tennessee counties … Having KPD Officer Kevin Aguilar tell me the story about rescuing a dog named “Good Sam” who was thrown over the Alcoa Highway bridge at 3 a.m. and landed near his cruiser below … Interviewing two KFD firefighters in 2019 at their Alcoa home who worked at the Downtown Headquarters station, not long after they welcomed triplet daughters into their family – Erica and David Frazier. Those girls are about 5 now. Busy couple then and now and both are still with KFD.

It has been an eye-opening experience, getting to know these men and women, professionals who care for us and help us all in a variety of roles, never really knowing what’s about to happen next in their worlds of emergency work and their individual “callings.”

300 and counting!

Tom King has been the editor of newspapers in Texas and California and also worked in Tennessee and Georgia. If you have someone you think we should consider featuring as an Our Town Hero, please email him at the link with his name or text him at 865-659-3562.