Eau Claire's police and fire commission has named Matt Jaggar the city’s new fire chief.
Jaggar said he is grateful, thankful and excited for the opportunity.
He succeeds previous chief Chris Bell—who retired last month.
Service can be a calling.
"It is held by my beliefs. In that, we should pay things forward and we should leave things better than they were previously," Jaggar said.
Jaggar’s desire to help took him from a teenage job at the grocery store to something unexpected.
“A member of the Town of Hull Fire Department came into the grocery store looking for an item, and he asked me if I’d ever considered being a firefighter, to which I candidly answered, ‘No!’," Jaggar said.
That push was an unexpected blessing for 18-year-old Jaggar.
It lit a spark that pushed him through school and, eventually, to Eau Claire.