Did you know that today, May 4th, is International Firefighter Appreciation Day? We were lucky enough to team up with Aegis Living in western Washington to celebrate firefighters in a big way!
Aegis Living is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, and operates 36 senior assisted living and memory care facilities across the west coast. They are well known as industry leaders in the quality care and innovative programming they provide seniors. As you can imagine, in that line of work, the staff at Aegis frequently rely on firefighters to provide first response services to their residents.
I received a phone call this winter when the Aegis team heard that International Firefighter Appreciation Day was coming. They wanted to give back to their local firefighters and were inspired to do so with a gift of beef! What started with an idea of gifting a few boxes of beef to one local fire station quickly grew, and grew, and grew. On Monday, Dan and I drove over to Bellevue with 178 BEEF BOXES that Aegis team members will be distributing to fire stations around King County today. Each box includes Thiessen Ranch grain-finished Angus beef roast, steak, and ground beef, along with a tin of Walla Walla Steak Company seasoning and a recipe from our kitchen. I was truly overwhelmed with gratitude while preparing these boxes. It’s an honor to share our beef with the first responder community.
In a fun full-circle moment, one of the fire stations that will receive a beef box is the exact same that awarded Dan with a “Citizens Award for Merit” in 2009 after he helped save the life of a young boy in a near-drowning. Dan was living in Bellevue at the time (prior to coming back to his Eastern Washington ranching roots), and an article describing the event still lives online in the Bellevue Reporter. The event had a big impact on Dan, especially as a father of young boys today.
Needless to say, we appreciate firefighters so much, and are grateful to Heidi Wells and Toni Radford on the Aegis Living team who had this inspiration and allowed us to help celebrate firefighters today!