On Fire for Service

Lessons from my father, a captain in the Seattle Fire Department

By Campbell Anderson

Captain Vance Anderson makes eye contact with the two yowling cats, sighs, and places one under each arm. Really, they have the survival instincts of flattened pennies. He exits the burning building, thankful that his fire gear is thick enough to protect him from the digging cat claws.

He is not a cat person. He is just a good person.

His coworkers are delighted by this feline surprise. Reporters take photos of them grinning while holding the cats. Captain Anderson, notably, is not in these pictures. His job is done.

My dad, Vance Anderson, was born in Spokane, Washington, on September 18th, 1971. His mom, Luanne, was just 19 when she had him, and his dad, Leroy, was 20. When my dad was three and his little sister was one, Leroy went out with his buddies for a night swim in the Spokane River. He never made it home. A few years later, Luanne remarried a man named Brian and had a third child, another girl.

“Being the only boy means you get to do dad stuff with your pop… exclusively. Mechanics, dirt biking, hunting, fishing… It also means you have to do the heavy, hard stuff, like carrying firewood and doing yard work,” Anderson said. And he truly was the quintessential older brother: he used to jump over his sisters with his BMX bike, to varying degrees of success.

My dad worked several jobs as an adolescent. His first was at Rax Roast Beef, a restaurant similar to Arby’s, only their slogan was, “Fast food with style.” Sure, if you counted a salad bar as fine dining. Anderson made $3.35 per hour when he started out. After six months of working there, his boss called him into the office. He had a huge smile on his face as he told Anderson he was getting a raise for working so hard. “There was this huge, pregnant pause,” Anderson said. “And then he said, ‘How does a nickel per hour sound?’ As if that was this great, big deal. Now, I don’t mind working hard, but I don’t like false rewards. So I left a month later.” Soon after, he was hired by Barney’s Supermarket. He started out as a bag boy before being moved into the meat department, where he learned how to be an apprentice butcher. “I learned how to quickly read and communicate with people,” Anderson told me. Later, he became a warehouse worker at a store called Pay ‘N Pak, where he drove the forklift around. He reflected, “I was given more responsibility. This was more of an ‘adult’ job where I was working elbow to elbow with older employees, making the same wage. More than anything, I learned that I did not want this life.” Then, he got a job as a janitor with School District 81. “I spent four years of my life cleaning up after little turkeys like you,” he told me. “I learned that the harder and more efficiently you work, the more time you have to yourself. It’s a good lesson for life.” While working this job, he was studying fire science at Spokane Community College and testing to become a firefighter.

Anderson’s interest in firefighting was piqued after he committed an accidental arson. “When [my friends and I] lit that fire, it’s just because we were cooking hot dogs and marshmallows. It was just a mistake. However, our punishment was to go to the fire station and be verbally chastised by the captain of the station.” He and his friends were made to watch an instructional video on fire safety. It was supposed to be a stern talking-to and that was it, but the captain couldn’t contain his love for his job. Anderson told me, “He loves this job so much. He asks, ‘Do you wanna hold the jaws of life? You wanna see how this works? Do you wanna look in this compartment?’ He was supposed to be the heavy, but his heart wasn’t in it. He had a passion for the tools; he had a passion for helping people. He got super excited about what the job was, and that got me super excited.” Anderson saw all of the benefits of the job. He realized that “it was an opportunity to help people, earn a living and have a family. Why would you not want to do this? And then to get paid for it? Yeah, it was an easy sell.”

But testing was another story. My dad told me about an article by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that came out around the time he was trying for the Seattle Fire Department (SFD). The article claimed that it was harder to get into the SFD than Harvard University. Anderson said, “In the mid-90s, it was super duper highly competitive, so the chances of you applying and getting a job in the first city you tried for were very low. So guys knew they had to shop around, or, rather, shop themselves around.” There were a lot of moving pieces that went into the application process, too. Many of the men my dad tested alongside had tested between 10 and 20 times. “You apply a lot,” he said. “You apply to a lot of places and take their various tests. It’s a combo of your written test score, your physical strength and ability, and your oral interview. All three of those things have to align on three separate days and you have to answer the questions perfectly.”

Anderson’s persistence paid off. After 2 years of testing (and 2 years of schooling to get his AAS in Fire Science from Spokane Community College), he landed the job with SFD. By this point, he’d been married to my mom, Lisa (Kempston) Anderson, for a year. The two met at a bar in Spokane while Kempston was visiting her childhood friend. Anderson, ever the charmer, had called out to her, “The view sure is nice from over here!” I guess that kind of thing worked in the 1990s, because the pair has been together ever since.

Anderson has devoted years of his life to serving others, both on the job and at home. 2025 marks Captain Anderson’s 29th year of working for the SFD. In his time there, he has seen Seattle’s population grow from roughly 550,000 people to over 800,000, and his children grow from infancy to adulthood. He works at Station 2, Belltown, which is the busiest station in the Pacific Northwest. He goes on an average of 11 calls per day, and works two 24-hour shifts a week, not including overtime. Despite this rigorous routine, Anderson comes home, cooks a gourmet-style meal for the family, tends to the yard, hits the gym, goes to church, and practices drums. And he takes care to make sure my mom, older siblings, and I feel loved and cared for. Last weekend, I visited him at home while my mom visited my sister in New York City. He filled the days with my favorite activities: watching horror movies, thrifting, dining at Chick-fil-A, and a surprise manicure. He also bought my favorite snacks and drinks and then made me a wonderful dinner. This consideration and kindness isn’t the exception for him—it’s the norm.

Anderson has inspired me to be more diligent and thoughtful. I admire his dogged grit; he pursues his goals with vigor and does not give up. He’s also shown me that service is a way of life. I now look for opportunities to serve others because of his example. He’s instilled in me a drive to help and to stay committed, even if the task feels small, even if the task feels big, even if I’m only aiding a pair of cats.

Back to Magazine