Milwaukee Fire Chief Aaron Lipski almost never became a firefighter at all.
His great-grandfather, grandfather and father all served as City of Milwaukee firefighters, but Lipski said he never felt pressured to follow in their footsteps.
“They said to do something that doesn’t beat your body up so much,” said Lipski about his father and grandfather.
So he did, working for a few years as an emergency medical technician for Paratech Ambulance.
Fate eventually intervened, and his father asked Lipski, then 21, if he was interested in taking the tests needed to join the fire academy.
“It was like a light switch went off, and I’ve never thought of anything else since,” said Lipski, who is now 47. Along the way, he married his wife of 20 years, Krista, and they have a 15-year-old daughter named Isabella.