Sometimes careers start from the most unusual beginnings. So it was for Aaron Knotts, now chief of the Chillicothe Fire Department.
“The summer between my eighth- and ninth-grade years,” he began, “I went to South Carolina with a friend and his family for a weeklong vacation. While down there, we had purchased some fireworks that were legal in SC.”
“We brought some back to Ohio with us where they are illegal to set off,” he continued. “We had given some to a couple neighborhood kids who ended up catching a school dumpster on fire with them. About a month later, a fire investigator showed up at my front door and asked if I had given some kids some fireworks and I said, ‘Yes.’ I then had to go to the Lancaster Fire Department and give a formal statement and ended up having to do 25 hours of community service as my punishment.”