In the late 1970s, Vincent Perez, the firefighter who died this past Thursday at the age of 48 while battling a fire in Diamond Heights, was just another teenager in the Mission with a sweet lowrider. It was a 1951 Lincoln. He loved taking it apart and putting it back together again. He did this in the parking lot of Whiz Burger, just a few steps away from St. Charles Catholic School, where he was a student.
“It was like ‘Happy Days,’” says Tony Rivera of SF Firefighters Local 798. “Sort of.” Rivera attended St. Charles at the same time as Perez, and they grew up together. Like Perez, he planned to be either a cop or a firefighter. Like Perez, he chose the latter.
Those familiar with Mission lowrider culture know the story. Every weekend, car-loving individuals drove those cars up and down Mission Street very slowly, so that everyone had sufficient time to admire them. Police squad cars would hover nearby, scanning the slow-moving sea of customized metal, looking for the smallest infraction to ticket. While the lowriders maintained that the drunkenness and vandalism along Mission Street was the direct result of losers without cars, rather than upstanding young gentlemen with them, the word had come down from on high: Ticket the lowriders every chance you get.
None of this deterred Perez, or Rivera, from their plan to eventually join the city workforce that was out there cutting into their fun. “We knew they didn’t want to be out on a Saturday night, screaming at teenagers,” says Rivera. “They were just doing what they were ordered to do by the mayor.”
Perez went into the Marine Corps and, when he returned, joined the fire department. His brother, Lou, became a police officer. Most of the family members became public safety officers of one kind or another. “It was part of growing up in the city,” says Rivera. “You stay in a part of the city. You see people’s parents. You help the disabled. People thank you.” Like a lot of people born in the city, Perez had a special fondness for businesses that he remembered from childhood, like The Old Clam House in the Bayview.
When his mother left the family home on Wool Street in Bernal due to declining health, Perez moved in with her. “He was a single guy, so he just took care of her,” says Rivera. “He shopped for her. He paid her bills. She is devastated.”
It’s been 10 years since a San Francisco firefighter was killed on the job. It’s more common for the fires to take people out slowly — firefighters spend their on-duty hours sharing a building with diesel-burning fire trucks, and sharing air with burning asbestos and chemical-laden buildings. Cancer is not uncommon [PDF].
“To this day, my mom calls me and says ‘Stay safe,’” says Rivera. “But I don’t think of it. You don’t expect to die.”
Perez was at a two-alarm fire in Diamond Heights when he was caught in a room that had heated to the point where suddenly everything in the room, including the particles in the air, ignited. The incident, known as a “flashover,” is one of the most feared in firefighting — victims are often killed by the sudden rush of heat created at the moment of flashover, rather than by the fire itself.
The other fireman in the room with Perez, Anthony Valerio, 53, died this morning at 7:30 a.m at SF General Hospital.
The cause of the flashover, and how it came to catch two such experienced firefighters by surprise, remains under investigation.
The rosary will be said for Perez this Thursday. His funeral will be held this Friday at St. Mary’s on Geary, though the exact time has not been set.
RIP Mr. Perez…Thanks for your service.