Eleven days ago when he was taking his 10-year-old daughter Shayla and 7-year-old son Jayden to school, Jamie Hamley had given up on his dream to be a firefighter.
When he heard the sound of folding steel in the midst of morning traffic and saw a red sports car spinning in front of him, spraying gasoline everywhere after being speared by a commercial van carrying electrical supplies, the pain Jamie Hamley felt after failing in his attempt to join the Sioux Falls
When he was sprinting through the orange flames surrounding the sports car and was poking his head through its broken-out passenger window into the 200-degree heat and thick black smoke inside it, shouting, "Is there anybody in here? Make a noise! Tell me where you're at!", Jamie Hamley had moved on in life.
It was only after he had twice pulled his head out of the car, bent low to the ground to where the air was clear, breathed deeply, stuck his head back into the car and saw the hand of its driver – 20-year-old Cody Doohen – reaching through the smoke far enough to grab and drag Doohen to safety seconds before flames filled the vehicle that Jamie Hamley's thoughts returned to why he loves and longs to fight fires.
"Everybody has a purpose in life," says the 33-year-old member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. "You have something that you're very good it. I'm supposed to be a fireman. I know that. I feel it."
Jamie Hamley already had passed the written portion as well as the physical fitness and firefighting simulation portions of the test to become a Sioux Falls
He figured the oral exam would be the easiest part of the test yet. He had earned an A in speech at Minot State University in North Dakota, had battled hundreds of fires during the five years he served as a volunteer firefighter on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota, had completed a four-month course to be a North Dakota-certified structural firefighter and had passed another course to be a nationally certified wild land forestry firefighter.
He could talk for hours about what it means to be a firefighter, about how his father had been a volunteer firefighter and had inspired him to be one, too, about what it's like to rush into a burning house and come to a closed door and hear the hiss and rumble of a fire on the other side, or about the time a middle-aged woman took hold of his arm and, in between sobs, thanked him for single-handedly stopping a wall of flames from reaching her home until other firefighters could arrive.
When the letter from the city arrived in the mail a month after the oral exam, Hamley and his wife Shauna couldn't contain their excitement. There were 24 open firefighting positions, and out of the 671 people who had applied, less than 50 still were in the running when Hamley sat down for his oral exam and recounted his life for the two firefighters conducting it. He left feeling like he did when he and his teammates broke the Turtle Mountain Community High School
Standing in the kitchen of their three-bedroom apartment, Hamley gave the letter to Shauna to read. When he learned he no longer was being considered for the openings, he sank into a chair and started to cry.
"I never felt that way before. I kept saying, 'I can't believe it. I can't believe it.' I didn't know what else to say."
For her part, Shauna kept saying how sorry she was.
Of the 178 firefighters in the Sioux Falls
Sioux Falls Fire Rescue Division Chief Jim Sideras says the fire department is trying to recruit more minorities. When there are openings for firefighters, he says, "we're casting our net as far as we can."
Sideras says openings in the fire department attract hundreds of applicants from across the nation. Most are white, few are minorities, and the competition is fierce. "The process is daunting."
Today, Jamie Hamley loads and unloads planes for FedEx while studying to be a registered nurse. If he cannot be a firefighter, he hopes being a nurse will allow him to do what he thinks he was put on Earth to do: be of aid to others.
On Monday at the Sioux Falls City Council meeting, Hamley will receive a proclamation commending him for his bravery in saving the life of Cody Doohen. While they're at it, someone should hand him an application to join the fire department, which, coincidentally, has another 20 open positions again.
Jamie Hamley has helped plenty of others. It's time to return the favor.