Capt. Pete Hayes

Peter-John Hayes is sneaking up on 35 years as a firefighter and paramedic. But there’s so much more to know about this 56-year-old man of many skills and talents. Today, he is the captain on the Red or A shift at Knoxville Fire Dept. (KFD) Station 12, nestled there on Old Kingston Pike and known by many as the “Sequoyah Hills Station.”

Capt. Hayes is simply “Pete” to family, friends and the KFD. The hyphenated first name is reflective of the devotion to the Christian faith that his parents and his entire family share. His late father was a minister and architect. His mother, Sharon, is 88, and moved to Knoxville in 2006.

And about his hyphenated name? His parents named him for the late and well-known evangelist they admired and loved, the Rev. Peter John Marshall.

KFD Capt. Pete Hayes takes a break on a May ride in the Great Smoky Mountains

If there’s a poster boy for the old phrase “he lets no moss grow under his feet,” it’s this man. Believe it. Book it. He picks and plays his Alvarez and Ovation guitars at home and at the station. He sings too. And rides around 50 miles a week on one of his bicycles. Hayes has an annual ride he loves – the round-trip 40 miles from Gatlinburg to Clingman’s Dome/ Kuwohi. He says he “studies a lot of theology” and reads a lot of World War II books from the European theater along with early American history. Hayes hunts and fishes; enjoying hunts during the Muzzleloader season.

In addition to firefighting and being a paramedic, which he says, “I absolutely love,” you can add these skills: extrication technician, fire instructor, all hazards incident management, incident commander, incident safety officer, rope rescue, technical rescue, trench rescue, and hazardous materials operations. He was one of KFD’s Firefighters of the Year in 2016 and has earned two KFD citations and a commendation medal. He’s the real deal.

During his 23 years at KFD, he’s worked at six different stations, but the one he enjoyed the most was 17½ years at Station 14 on Central Avenue Pike, one of Knoxville’s busiest stations. “It is a really busy hall with around 3,000 calls a year, and I like being busy every shift. I’ve always wanted to work at the busiest fire hall. You get a little bit of everything, but you never know what’s next,” Hayes says. Station 12 he says has approximately 1,500 calls a year. His crew includes senior firefighter Tyler Burton and firefighter Darrin Sowa.

His career began in October 1990 with five years at a volunteer fire department in tiny Versailles, Indiana. His first call was to a house fire. Then he moved to Palm Bay, Florida, (Brevard County) and he graduated from the Port St. Lucie fire academy. Then he joined a small department in Deltona, Florida, at a one-engine station. He did not enjoy Deltona and spent the next four years at the Osceola County Fire Dept., which is a responding agency (among others) to Walt Disney World.

Family vacations from his younger years were spent with relatives in Ohio and the family always drove through Knoxville coming and going. Knoxville and the Great Smoky Mountains got his attention and through the years he never forgot it. On June 4, 2000, Pete and Julie married and  spent a weeklong honeymoon in Townsend. That’s when they made the decision to move here.

Home life is busy as well. He and his wife, Julie, met in Palm Bay at church and celebrated their silver anniversary last month. They share their Anderson County home near Bull Run Steam Plant with their three children – Asa, 20, now studying mechanical engineering at Bryan College; Avery, 17; and Levi, 11. Julie has home schooled all three. The family are members at Cornerstone Church of Knoxville off Westland Drive.

Hayes retains the love of his profession from 35 years ago. Why? How?

Where did FF interest begin, when and why? “It was an adrenalin rush then and it still is for me. It’s cool and fun, most of the time. We all learn new things every day on every call we run. My love also comes from finding solutions and solving problems and helping people survive what may be the worst day of their life. I hang on to those kinds of things. You look at life from a different perspective. It helps give me direction in my life.”

There’s more. “I love dealing with the kids. We were on one accident call and this little girl was so upset for her mom. I grabbed her a Teddy Bear off our truck and told her we needed a name for it. It calmed her down immediately. I also love the life at the stations, the attitudes and emotions.”

Hayes has not escaped injuries. He’s been to hospitals three times. He was on a hazardous material scene for 19 consecutive hours and was overcome by sheer exhaustion. Several years ago, he was exposed to a chemical that turned out to be a serious respiratory irritant. On another call a hot coal fell from a ceiling and found its way inside his fire coat and onto his back. There was a nasty third-degree burn.

Not that long ago in 2019 he was at Station 14 and he and his crew were called to a car with a little girl inside. He calls it “a hot car fatality.” The mother left the little kid in the car. That was bad enough. “But, her reaction is what got to me. It was like she planned to get back at her ex-husband. She was arrested. I know I walked away from that one with PTSD.”

Let’s file this one under the “Most Unusual Call Ever.” Tell us about it, Captain! “You know, dead people have a certain look about them. They just look different. We had a call about a lady in cardiac arrest. As soon as we walk in and I see her. I said she’s faking it. She’s not dead. The lady she lived with was freaking out, screaming for us to do something, do anything. Get an oxygen mask on her. I leaned over close to her face and said again that she’s faking it. I did the Eye Blink Test. I gently brushed a finger over her eye lashes and she blinked both of her eyes. She was alive. She’s faking it,” Hayes said.

The woman stood up in the bed and screamed “I’m not faking it. Take me to the hospital.” Turns out, Hayes said, she was faking it to get away from her friend and the house. She hated living there. “That lady walked right out the front door and got into the back of the ambulance and said take me to the hospital. So, they had to take her. What happened after that I do not know.”

When he was working in Osceola County he applied to KFD in March 2001 and was finally hired in April 2002. “And I took a pay cut to come here,” he says. “But it was a great decision for us.”

When we asked three KFD guys to describe him, the answers were identical: “Great guy. Never slows down.” Bingo!

Tom King has been the editor of newspapers in Texas and California and also worked in Tennessee and Georgia. If you have someone you think we should consider featuring, please email him at the link with his name or text him at 865-659-3562.

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