On Tuesday, June 16, Altrusa International of Pampa, Intersect Power, and Pampa Home & Sleep Store made quite the special delivery to the Pampa Fire Department, the gift of comfort.
“Several weeks ago, Lynnae with Altrusa reached out to us and said it was on their hearts and minds to do something nice for the firefighters, and one topic that came up was they wanted us to be able to sleep comfortably at night,” said Fire Chief Kasey Presson. “We discussed our beds which hadn’t been replaced in quite a while, and there had been discussions to do it several times through the years and just for one reason or another, something always stood priority over it. So when the topic was literally how can they help make us be more comfortable, what better way than to replace their mattresses?”
While the Pampa Fire Department has a set budget every year, and the appeal of having new mattresses to rest away the day (or night’s) stresses was always in consideration, their own comfort wasn’t their main priority: keeping the community safe with new and efficient equipment was and always has been.
“If it ever came down to my personnel and they had to pick life-saving equipment or a bed to sleep on, any one of them will choose the life-saving equipment. The City of Pampa would never be contingent just to let them sleep on garbage, and Shane Stokes is just not programmed that way, but there have been conversations about making some decisions about what makes it into the budget and what comes out of it. It just never ranked high enough on our list to where we chose new mattresses over something else.”
With a truck full of mattresses provided by Pampa Home & Sleep Store, crew members and loaders hauled the 20+ year-old mattresses out and brought the new ones up, with six going to Fire Station One and eight to Station Two, each with new mattress toppers provided by Altrusa, the mattresses themselves funded by Intersect.
This generous donation is all in part of the special folks in our community that take notice, ask how they can help, and deliver (literally). The entire Pampa Fire Department crew is deeply grateful for Altrusa, Intersect, and Pampa Home & Sleep Store for a gift that may seem so simple, yet means so much.
