Jason Elmore has walked several paths in life, none of which he ever planned.
For some people, Elmore was the face of the Chesterfield Fire Department. with whom he served for 20 years.
He originally wanted to join the police department, but a fateful quirk of the regulations changed his course.
"Once I became 18 years old, I realized I couldn't be a police officer until I was 21," Elmore said. "So I started volunteering as a firefighter. It didn't take long after that for me to realize this was going to be a career for me in public safety."
As a firefighter, Elmore spent half a century helping his community through some of its worst moments. Many of those moments have stuck with him, including a woman who was severely burned. "We stopped for a moment and made sure we got her husband into the ambulance before we took her to the helicopter to make sure he was able to see her one last time," he recalled.