Steve Rucker was killed fighting the San Diego fires last week. I hadn’t talked to him in probably fifteen years. There is much mention in the papers about his being from Novato. Which is where he had lived since joining their fire department. But he was from Fremont. He had grown up there and gone to Kennedy High School. I knew him because a lot of my friends went to high school with him –And he was Boy Scout. He belonged to Troop 449 in Fremont. He made Eagle.
Steve wasn’t they kind of guy you expected to see on the football field running for a touchdown. He was a little more quiet and withdrawn than that. When he was in high school he was a thin lanky guy who wanted to be a paramedic. I knew him because of common friends and he came to me to work on merit badges. I was his counselor and helped him get his last few badges for Eagle. Steve took a lot of crap from some of the jocks in school about being a Boy Scout. To quote one of my friends (an unnamed jock) , “Most scouts are dorks, like Rucker.” I never liked it when my friend would say that. Mainly because you never know what those dorks might end up doing someday. Steve put his life on the line to save homes, lives and property. How dorky was that?
I wish I could have kept in touch with him.
