Meet Members of Our Logistics Support Team
Will Lawton
Say hello to our first official support driver. Will is no stranger to this ride. In 2011, he and a team of supporters from Santa Clara, surprised us and flew back to New York to meet us as we arrived at the FDNY Firefighter Memorial. Will is a Retired Volunteer Reserve Firefighter from the Santa Clara Fire Department. Will was a dedicat
Say hello to our first official support driver. Will is no stranger to this ride. In 2011, he and a team of supporters from Santa Clara, surprised us and flew back to New York to meet us as we arrived at the FDNY Firefighter Memorial. Will is a Retired Volunteer Reserve Firefighter from the Santa Clara Fire Department. Will was a dedicated public servant as a volunteer just to help out his community.
His career was in the private sector and has since retired from that career. He is never just sitting still as he is very involved with projects that help to make him the giver he is. One of his bigger hobbies is flying and he flies his own plane for many different reasons. He is also a sports car enthusiast and loves to drive fast. Or at least look like he's driving fast!
His skills as a driver will come in handy and I'll have to put a block behind the accelerator to help him maintain support driver speed. Very glad to have him along on this ride!
Matt Straley
I would like to thank Matt for helping us with logistical needs in the Chicago area. Matt is a firefighter for the City of Chicago and a leader in their bicycle club “Ignite the Spirit. With his help we look forward to a new and exciting route which will include a couple of familiar stops. Their group also rode with us for a couple of da
I would like to thank Matt for helping us with logistical needs in the Chicago area. Matt is a firefighter for the City of Chicago and a leader in their bicycle club “Ignite the Spirit. With his help we look forward to a new and exciting route which will include a couple of familiar stops. Their group also rode with us for a couple of days leading into and out of Chicago. He had worked it out so that CFD had come out to support us. What an awesome experience
Walter Villavicencio
Walter Villavicencio
Walter is a first-generation San Franciscan from Latino immigrant parents, I was interested in community service at an early age. Growing up, I aspired to be a police officer due to the popular 1970s TV series The Streets of San Francisco. In the fifth grade, my good friend Tim O. and I made a Streets of San Francisco episode with an 8mm
Walter is a first-generation San Franciscan from Latino immigrant parents, I was interested in community service at an early age. Growing up, I aspired to be a police officer due to the popular 1970s TV series The Streets of San Francisco. In the fifth grade, my good friend Tim O. and I made a Streets of San Francisco episode with an 8mm Howard and Bell movie camera. I forgot which one of us played the detectives in the show, Karl Malden, or Michael Douglas. I eventually put my dream on pause and decided to pursue a family business in jewelry making which was in the family for a few generations. In 1988 I took the San Francisco Fire Department entrance exam to be a firefighter and live out my dream of helping my community. It took a few years, and I entered the SFFD in 1991.
Being a firefighter was exciting and rewarding. I loved the eclectic and talented individuals I worked with in the firehouse and continued to be amazed at the skill and experience of my coworkers. I was far away from the little kid who played cops with his buddies, but in hindsight, I believe some of the trauma from growing up with alcoholism in my family allowed me to empathize and find compassion for the individuals I encountered while responding to 911 emergencies.
The early 90s wasn’t a time when you found us sitting around the firehouse talking about our “feelings” after returning from a particularly gruesome or difficult emergency call. We would give time and attention to our physical well-being by taking a shower, changing into a clean uniform, hosing down our PPEs, and ensuring our equipment was clean, stocked, and ready for the next 911 call. We did not consider asking each other the simple question “are you ok?” or openly discussing what we had just witnessed.
It was with the encouragement of a firefighter friend and a 30-year career witnessing a brother or sister in trouble and watching them lost to addiction or experiencing a behavioral health crisis that ended their career as a firefighter or ended their life that I formed a team of active and retired firefighters to create The San Francisco Firefighter and EMS Behavioral Health Foundation.
After retiring in 2021 and assisting a couple of brother firefighters through a behavioral health crises, I felt driven to be involved and learn more about the resources available to our active and retired members. I joined the department’s Behavioral Health Committee and took Peer Support and Critical Incidence Response training offered by the SFFD. I got to know our behavioral health coaches (stress unit) and recognized how overworked they were. Under the shadow of a global pandemic and unprecedented mandatory overtime, I was aware of how exhausted our members were. I noticed there were gaps in treatment even though we have many resources at our disposal.
I believe the journey to a healthy recovery has many turns and roadblocks. At critical times the necessary resources are not always available to an SFFD member in crisis. Even though employee health insurance provides clinical treatment or therapy sometimes additional short-term monetary assistance is necessary to get the member in crisis to the next step toward health.