Firefighter Goes Above And Beyond To Make A Little Girl Feel Special

A Florida firefighter went above the call to make a little girl’s day much brighter.

Suwannee Primary School’s Facebook page, said that Suwannee County Fire & Rescue Captain Chip Leathlean saw a young girl “not engaged” in a fire safety program like the rest of the kids. So he “took it upon himself” to make the blind girl feel special.

He said, “I understood that visually impaired ‘see’ with touch, and I wanted to include her in part of it,” Leathlean said. So he helped her touch and feel the hose. “When she touched the nozzle, her face lit up, and so did mine,” Leathlean added.

When photos of that heartwarming moment were posted by the school, more than 6,000 people responded to it. It reached more than 100,000 people after a website shared it.

Leathlean said he wasn’t aware that photos were taken, “It was nothing about me,” he said. “It was all about the little girl.

Her mother, Shanta Oglesby, said her daughter came back home from school and was excited about what had happened. “When she got home, she explained — she was just talking about what happened,” Oglesby said.

Oglesby said she cried like a baby when she saw the attention the photos were getting online. Leathlean felt encouraged too by the response. “It reaffirmed positivity in my career and the impact that we have as first responders,” he said.