ROYAL CITY - Santiago "Chago" Villafana joined Grant County Fire District No. 10 in 2002 as a firefighter.

"Just to be part of the community," he said.

But Villafana made quite a splash. Two years in a row his fellow firefighters elected him Firefighter of the Year.

"The first award really surprised me," he said. "It surprised me even more to win the award the next year too."

The second-year award included funding for travel and expenses to a training conference in Las Vegas that lasted two days. It was loaded with helpful information about firefighting.

"I felt I was still new as a firefighter. So that conference brought me up to speed with the rest of the firefighters," Villafana said.

Villafana finds structure (house) fires the most interesting, "unless someone doesn't make it out."

"They call us out on car accidents too, and I go to help what I can, to extricate," he said. "I really do not like bad car wrecks."

Villafana would like to see new volunteers from the younger generation of the Spanish-speaking community. He believes people think fire-fighting is like a paid second job.

"It's not," he said. "It's volunteering. I find it very rewarding just to have the training and be able to help."

Villafana praised the training that goes with being a volunteer. One of the firefighter training sessions was a junk car plumbed with propane.

It could be set on fire several times to let each firefighter be the man on the end of the hose to put it out. The training officer watched, and all firefighters got turns until they understood the correct method.

"There's more to this than just squirting water on it," Villafana said. "We get a lot of good training and good experience using that training."

Villafana believes the fire department is running well. He would really like to see more Spanish-speaking volunteers and says they would be welcomed and valued.

"I want the Spanish guys who might consider joining to know that when I make a suggestion or a comment, the fire chief and everyone else listen to me," he said. "I feel respected as a firefighter."

As for a most memorable experience, Villafana recalled: "A few years back we got on the scene of a small brush fire and, due to some issues with water and equipment, we ended up putting out that fire with buckets of water from a ditch. We got the fire put out, then went back to the station and fixed our equipment problem. Once is enough."

Career-wise, Villafana is a supervisor at one of the larger apple orchards in the Royal City area.