VIDEO: Phoenix Fire Station 17 is one place Vee Ith never imagined he’d be.
“No, no, I’d never thought I’d be standing here, but definitely grateful for that opportunity and that chance,” Ith said.
But to know why Ith, a firefighter paramedic for the Phoenix Fire Department, you’d have to ask him about his backstory. “I don’t talk about it much unless somebody asks,” Ith said.
Ith has been with the fire department for four years, working about two years at Fire Station 17.
But in the late ‘70s, his family fled Cambodia to get away from the communist regime.
“My mother and father were both in concentration camps along with the majority of my family,” Ith said.
However, Ith said his mother wanted a better life for her kids.
“We had lost my older brother, he was a couple years older than me, to starvation in the camps,” Ith said.