"I had a surgery at Aurora to get a syst out in my chest; it was the leftover junk from tumor," said Rudi Betancourt. While washing dishes during pizza night at the firehouse, Betancourt explained how he's back to work after beating cancer more than a year ago. CBS 58 spoke with Betancourt, his fellow firefighter, Lt. Larry Derosier, and now-retired Kenosha firefighter Brad Pheiffer. While the three are doing well now, dozens of firefighters lost their battle with cancer in the last year. That includes 47-year-old Lt. Kristen Ciganek of Milwaukee Fire Department. "She was strong, she was positive, she was energetic. She was good at what she did," said Deputy Chief Aaron Lipski, Milwaukee Fire Department. The newest numbers attribute 70 percent of line of duty deaths to cancer. Even before that statistic, the problem caught the attention of researchers.