Flint Journal (Michigan)
Copyright 2007 Flint Journal
All Rights Reserved
FLUSHING, Mich. — After spending years as an on-call Flushing firefighter and officer, Dean A. Hiteshew - who’d worked as a manager of a trucking company in his day job - decided to make a career out of saving lives.
“He did his EMT (emergency medical technician) training in a couple of years,” said Hiteshew’s friend, Joe Karlichek, vice president of STAT EMS ambulance service. “He was probably more than halfway through his paramedic training and doing great.”
But Hiteshew’s dream of becoming a paramedic ended May 4 when he died of injuries he received in a collision May 3 as he rode his motorcycle on Beecher Road near Westcombe Avenue.
According to Flint police, Hiteshew, 49, was going west just before 4 p.m. when the driver of an eastbound vehicle turned in front of him. Hiteshew was fatally injured and the case remains under investigation.
Friends described him as a Flushing Township man, a husband and father of two college-aged daughters.
Karlichek said Hiteshew was a big man who worked hard to make a midlife job change from loading trucks to EMT and taking courses at Genesys Regional Medical Center to become a paramedic.
“He loved the job, he loved the work,” Karlichek said.
Karlichek met Hiteshew when Karlichek joined the Flushing Area Fire Department in 1991.
“I was a wet-behind-the-ears kid and I grew up with him, he showed me how to be a firefighter,” Karlichek said.
He said he worked with Hiteshew on many fundraisers for community and charitable causes, such as fire prevention efforts.
“I called him ‘the Ox’ because of his strength and his desire to work, to get things done,” Karlichek said. “Everyone who knew him knew he was a workhorse.”
Mike Badder, battalion chief of the Flushing Fire Department, said local firefighters were shaking their heads over the tragedy.
“Dean was an outgoing guy who always wanted to help, to lend a hand,” he said. “He’d been a part of the department for 22 years.”
After working for Allied Trucking for years, Hiteshew went to work a few years ago for his friend Karlichek, who’d help start an ambulance company.
“I just saw him, noon Thursday,” said Karlichek, a note of disbelief in his voice. “I just expected that I would see him next week, as usual.”
Karlichek said that if Hiteshew could speak to his old friends, he’d admonish them not to mope sadly around.
“He’d be saying, ‘Don’t stand around here crying. Let’s get busy, get the job done.’”
Funeral services were held Tuesday at St. Robert Catholic Church in Flushing.