By Nate Carlisle
The Salt Lake Tribune
Copyright 2006 The Salt Lake Tribune
All Rights Reserved
It’s 9 a.m., and Fitzgerald “Fitz” Petersen is exhausted.
A captain for the Unified Fire Authority, Petersen just finished a 48-hour shift, during which he got maybe six hours sleep. But rather than go home to a warm bed, Petersen walks through the cold winter and into a UFA station on Fort Union Boulevard. In one corner, next to the overhead doors, is a 5-foot-tall stack of plastic bags and cardboard boxes filled with donated coats and blankets.
Petersen picks up the bags and boxes, tosses them into the back of a UFA cargo van and drives away. There are four more stations to visit this morning before he delivers the warm clothes.
For 14 years, Petersen has spent his Christmas season collecting garments like these from firefighters - and the public - and giving them to the needy. From Thanksgiving through Christmas, Petersen spends his free time driving to fire stations all over Salt Lake Valley, picking up donations people have dropped there.
The St. Vincent de Paul homeless shelter in Salt Lake City receives most of the garments. But Petersen also gives coats and blankets to service organizations near the respective fire stations and needy people he comes across while fighting fires and helping the sick and injured. It would be easier if people took their donations to the shelter themselves, but that doesn’t seem to be the way people want to give.
“Look at this neighborhood,” Petersen says, as the van drives through the intersection on Wasatch Boulevard at 3500 East. Well-groomed, tree-lined houses sit on the hills overlooking the valley.
“We’re far removed from downtown,” he says. “I have learned a lot of people don’t like going downtown.”
A few moments later, Petersen arrives at another UFA station and walks inside. There’s just one bag at this station.
“OK, we’ll get out of your way,” Petersen tells a small group of firefighters standing near the kitchen.
“Roger that,” one replies.
Petersen, 41, grew up in East Carbon. After two years of active service in the U.S. Army, he enrolled at the University of Utah.
There, he began volunteering with Catholic charities. In 1991, he joined the Salt Lake County Fire Department, now a part of UFA, and began collecting coats from his fellow firefighters. The next year, the department began letting him use the stations as public drop-off points.
For a few years, he used his own vehicle to pick up the donations. Then the department began letting him use one of their vans.
Petersen starts to smile as the van arrives at the UFA station in Kearns. It serves some of the poorest residents in UFA territory, yet the Kearns residents “just crush me with donations,” Petersen says.
The firefighters inside greet Petersen then walk with him to one of the spare bedrooms. As Petersen predicted, the bed and floor are covered with black garbage bags full of coats and blankets. There are shoes and stuffed animals, too.
As a firefighter, Petersen has seen a lot of people in need. He remembers one woman whose car caught fire on Redwood Road. Petersen learned she was living with her four children in a house, not far from the Kearns station, with no heat, electricity or plumbing.
Petersen sys he started calling firefighters with contractor licenses and had them turn on the family’s utilities and do minor repairs to the home.
The next stop is a station in Taylorsville. Petersen walks inside and finds the offices, the kitchen and the lounge deserted.
“Must be on a call,” Petersen says.
There are two red and white children’s coats sitting on a chair near the entrance. Petersen picks them up and takes them with him to the van.
The first year, Petersen collected a few hundred garments. Now he’s up to 4,000 to 5,000. He supplies the St. Vincent shelter enough warm clothes to get it through the winter and to give it a start on the next winter.
“Without him and his donations, we couldn’t make it,” says Jim Upton, the director of emergency services at St. Vincent.
At 10:19 a.m., Petersen arrives at another Taylorsville station. He enters the station and exits a few minutes later with a white shopping bag full of garments and one green, woven woman’s coat - the kind that went out of style in the 1990s - over his left arm.
A few years ago, Petersen says, he was working full-time and was a full-time master’s degree student at the U. He thought about not collecting the garments that year. Then he talked to William Pinkey, one of the shelter’s employees. Petersen says Pinkey made it clear without the donations the shelter was “just screwed.” Petersen continued collecting the donations.
“We used to have an internal goal where we’d stop doing this until people stop freezing at night,” Petersen says, “and every time I hear about someone freezing to death on the news it tears me up.”
Collecting coats and blankets are a lot of work, Petersen says, but he enjoys it. When he retires from UFA, he hopes to run a charity.
At 10:45 a.m., Petersen arrives at the shelter. There’s about a foot of daylight between the piles of donations and the van’s ceiling.
The shelter’s employees quickly come out to help him unload his cargo.
“How are you today, Fitz?” Pinkey asks.
“I’m tired,” Petersen replies.