A wrong turn on the way home from Taco Bell changed Adam Thiel's life. It was 24 years ago when the then-19-year-old student at American University got lost returning to campus and passed a firehouse advertising free EMT lessons.
Thiel, impressed by the emergency responders who rushed his father to the hospital when he was dying of cancer, signed up and never looked back.
"Once I got hooked, I was all in," said Thiel, Philadelphia's new fire commissioner. Thiel, 43, is the first non-Philadelphian to lead the city's fire department. He has worked in Maryland, Virginia, Arizona and North Carolina. He has been fire director for Virginia, chief of the Alexandria fire department, and deputy chief of homeland security for Virginia.
Despite a standout resume, his appointment was not universally applauded here.
Club Valiants, Philadelphia's association of black firefighters, said it was disappointed that the acting commissioner, Derrick Sawyer, an African American, had not been kept on in the executive position.