He wrestled with kidney cancer for a decade, fought like a demon, but finally Dave Rehnke took his last breath on Jan. 11.
Rehnke worked for 26 years as a firefighter in Peoria, rising to the rank of captain. He loved his city, his peers on the frontlines and the job – though it was firefighting that killed him.
I met Rehnke five years ago at the Arizona Legislature, where the state’s firefighters – clients of mine – were pushing to expand the roster of cancers presumed to be caused by their profession. Rehnke, newly retired from Peoria, was five years into being eaten alive by renal cell carcinoma, a cancer undoubtedly caused by his line of work with its smoke, soot and burning poisons.
He testified before a legislative committee about how the disease metastasized into his lungs and the debilitating effects of chemotherapy; about how just one of his drugs cost $90,000 a year; about the months he had spent in court suing to get the workers’ compensation he so clearly deserved.