FIREHOUSE ROAD

Daryl Prescott, FIrefighter

Rock Hill Fire Department
Years in service: 3

Occupation: Corrections officer

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Daryl Prescott was a city kid, and it never crossed his mind that he would grow up to be a firefighter.

“In no shape or form would I think that I was capable of seeing a burning building and being like, “Ok, let me put my stuff on and go running into it’,” Prescott says. And besides, the men in his family were in law enforcement, and he planned to follow their lead.

But then there was Lou, his best friend’s dad. Lou was FDNY, and he’d talk about how great it would be if his boy and young Daryl became firefighters together. Then tragedy took Lou’s son.

“So it was left to me to become a firefighter,” Prescott says.

Already on his way upstate for a career with the Department of Corrections, Prescott became a member of the DOC fire brigade, a specially trained unit of first responders within the prison system. Joining his local volunteer department - Rock Hill - was the next logical step.

Lou is gone now, too, one of so many FDNY heroes who died of a 9/11-related illness, and Prescott thinks of him each time he suits up and heads owards a burning building.

“I'm a firefighter,” says Prescott, “because I’m fulfilling a promise.”