YOUR SPACE: Firefighters warm up Colorado calendar
Bo Hutchinson is proud of making the Colorado fire-jock calendar for 2009.
As Mr. October, he looks pretty hot, with bare-chested bod in bunker pants.
For once, he's proud of the childhood burn scars that embarrassed him for years.
"As far as being halfnaked, I have always been the ugly ducking growing up," says Bo, 33, a Colorado Springs firefighter at Station 7 at Palmer Park and North Academy boulevards.
Now it's a badge of honor - and a connection to young burn victims at Denver's Children's Hospital Burn Center benefiting from calendar sales.
"I know exactly how they feel and what they're going through," Bo says.
Calendar sponsor Fired Up For Kids (www.firedupforkids.org) hopes to raise $100,000 for the Denver hospital.
City firefighter Carol Scheideman, 35, also is featured on the 15-month calendar released last week.
They are among 15 firefighters statewide who made the cut from the hundreds vying for a spot on the calendar.
"It's an ego boost," Bo says.
He was two days shy of his fourth birthday when he pulled a skillet off the stove, despite his mom's safety measures of turning in the pan handle.
"I tried climbing onto the counter and my hand hit the pan and knocked it onto my head, spilling hot Crisco oil," he says. He suffered second-degree burns on his face and chest, and third-degree burns on his left leg.
"My whole face was swollen, and they thought I was going to lose my eyesight. It was painful getting bandages changed."
The emotional scars were worse.
"I let it affect me growing up. I got teased a lot. Being a young child with scars, especially a boy, everyone points and asks questions. It grows on you and becomes part of you. For the longest time I felt different. Now I feel it in a different light."
For the tryouts, Bo had to saunter shirtless down a runway to the song "Pour Some Sugar on Me."
"I had a bottle of water in my pocket. A VIP sat right near the stage. I handed her the water and let her pour it on me."
Yvette Rebik, calendar spokeswoman, said contestants also were judged on answers. "We're not just making a beefcake calendar."
The responses to Most Heroic Experience are listed by their revealing poses - Bo's in front of a rope-climbing net and Carol has a backdrop of flames.
Two model firefighters who met through the calendar project recently married. Bo and Carol are single.
She's a little nervous about becoming a pinup. "It's pushing me outside my comfort zone. I almost didn't do it," she says.
She was motivated by the ambassador side. "We run on patients who get burned and they get sent to the Children's Hospital," she says. "I can see the other side, see what happens."
She was a paramedic before fighting fires for Station 11 at Jet Wing Drive and South Academy Boulevard. "It was a physical challenge for me," she says. "I had some say I'd never be able to pass the physical. When someone tells me I can't do something..."
The firefighters are in for a year of hospital visits and publicity events. They also are selling the calendars that are sure to light up any room.
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Tell me your stories: 636-0253 or andrea.brown@gazette.com
