Public service was a natural choice for Assistant Fire Chief Dan Stolinski.
His Irish immigrant great-grandfather, Michael Kissane, served with the Omaha Police Department from 1887 to 1913.
Stolinski's grandfather, Frank Stolinski, was on the Omaha Fire Department for 43 years, retiring in 1958.
Athough Dan's dad didn't choose fire service as a career, he had a lot of buddies and a brother who did.
That made an impression on Dan, as well as his firefighter brother, John.
“There are a lot of family ties on the job. It's a way of life,” Dan says.
With three sons each, the odds are looking good for keeping the family name in the department.
Dan Stolinski, who went through Omaha Police Academy training and is an arson investigator, had been on the Millard Fire Department for nine months when it merged with the OFD in 1998. John joined the department 1 year, 9 months later.
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Every firefighter has at least one call etched in memory. For Dan Stolinski, it's the 7-year-old boy who ran in front of a car on Thanksgiving Day 1997. Calls involving kids are always tough, he says.
“I stayed focused and did what I needed to do,” Stolinski recalls, still hearing bystanders' anguished screams as the first responders worked.
The child was taken by helicopter to St. Joseph Hospital, where he died.
A training officer consoled Stolinski, “You didn't cause the accident. You were there to make things better.”
A 2002 house fire left Stolinski — a new father at the time — with second- and third-degree burns to his upper back when burning ceiling debris got into his hood and jacket.
The incident prompted his father-in-law, retired Omaha Police Sgt. Bob Schafer, only half-joking, to ask, “Why do you always have to be the first guy in?”
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While Stolinski was moving up in rank, his wife, Carrie, was raising the kids and earning bachelor's and master's degrees. Today, she teaches high school and their children are ages 8, 6 and 4. The middle child once told his dad, “When you go to work, you're a hero.”
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