We like to think of firefighters as tough and burly men and women who heroically battle life-threatening situations in order to keep our communities safe from harm’s way. And they definitely do that in spades, but you know what else they do? They make meaningful connections with community members in sometimes surprising ways as is the case in a now-viral story of the North Davis Fire District in West Point, Utah.
On October 12th, the NDFD posted a sweet image of two firefighters, Chief Hadley and Captain Lloyd proudly showing their creative manicures of pink and purple nail polish that covered the tips of their fingers. As it turns out, the two were on the scene of a car accident in which a little girl was shaken up and scared but hurt thank goodness. The Chief and Captain saw that she was clutching bottles of nail polish and so they used that to their advantage to help calm the girl down.
They requested manicures.
“Within minutes, the child was calmly paining their nails and had forgotten about the accident she had just experienced,” the post reads. “Great job Chief Hadley and Captain Lloyd for providing awesome customer service to one of our young citizens.”
As a mother, I cannot imagine my children being in a situation in which emergency responders must step in to help calm my kids. The idea sends chills down my spine as it would any parent. So, when stories like this emerge and the world gets to see how subtle and compassionate our community emergency responders are, it sends a message to parents and community members everywhere that there really is good in the world. Chief Hadley and Captain Lloyd deserve all the praise in the world for being so kind to a terrified little kid.
The post has touched a lot of hearts, helping it be shared more than 6,000 times with 20,000 responses, and closing in on 900 comments.
One of the funniest responses came from a local resident, Amy Sue Nelson Starks who wrote, “So pretty! You’ll be glad to know we now have a LARGE bottle of polish remover in Dispatch for the next time.”
