For 6-year-old Johnny Orgill, it might have been a sad Christmas this year if not for the generosity of the C-shift firefighters of the Biddeford Fire Department.
On Dec. 2, thieves made off with Johnny’s Radio Flyer wagon from his home on Sullivan Street in the city and he cried and searched for days for his beloved toy, but only found a few pieces of the wagon scattered in a park near his parent’s home.
Johnny’s mother, Carrie Stackpole, said her son, a first-grader at Biddeford Primary School, got the wagon this summer and loved to play with it.
“It was just an old wooden wagon, but it meant the world to him,” she said. “He’d take it with him wherever he went.”
She said Johnny loved to ride in the wagon and they pulled him around town to events in it before it disappeared.
The little boy was so despondent over the loss of the wagon that his father, John Orgill, posted what had happened on Facebook.
“We really don’t know what happened, but some neighbors told us there were some intoxicated people outside that night and they thought they might have taken it,” Orgill said. “We looked everywhere for it, but all we could find were a few pieces of the wagon’s side.”
He said their intention was to alert the community that the wagon had been taken and possibly find someone who might know where it could be.
A Biddeford firefighter saw the social media post and told his co-workers about it.
“It was brought to the attention of the members of C-shift and we discussed it and decided we wanted to do something to help,” said Firefighter/Paramedic Tim Sevigny.
The crew pitched in together and purchased a new Radio Flyer wagon for Johnny, along with a Teddy Bear and a fireman’s hat.
“We then reached out to his parents and told them we wanted to give Johnny a tour of the fire station,” Sevigny said.
So on Wednesday afternoon, Sevigny and members of Biddeford Fire Department’s C-shift escorted Johnny and his parents through the fire station on Alfred Street.
Johnny received high-fives from the fire crew and he got to sit in the driver’s seats of several fire trucks.
When the tour reached the museum inside the fire station, Sevigny stopped and presented Johnny with his new wagon, adorned with a bright red bow and Biddeford Fire Department stickers.
“I certainly wasn’t expecting this,” Stackpole said. “My hope when we put it on Facebook was that they would find it, but I never expected anything like this to happen. It’s a miracle.”
Sevigny said it’s important for the fire department to do things like this for the community.
“It’s who we are and it’s what we do,” he said. “As providers of public safety we help people. At Christmas it’s even more important for us to reach out and help somebody. This made this little boy happy and that’s really what Christmas should be about.”
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