From threatening lives to saving lives

by Demetrius Patterson, Chicago Defender, April 10, 2006

Hometown emergency medical technician and firefighter Saquan Gholar wouldn’t argue with
anyone who might say that 10 years ago he was heading toward a future of prison life, or worst,
spiraling to an early death.

At the age of 15, Gholar saw the things that many young boys growing up in the Back of the
Yards and Englewood communities noticed: fast cars, attractive women and plenty of bling.

But being one of seven children raised by a single mother, Gholar, now 25, had no way of
obtaining those items. So he joined the notorious Black Stone Rangers street gang and decided
to take the material things he wanted.

“Initially when I was growing up, I had no sense of where I wanted to be at,” Gholar explained.
“When I turned 15, I was on the streets running with the gangs. I got out on the streets, but soon
something hit me and I decided that I wanted better for my life. I just saw so many young brothers
my age dying around me. I thought that I could do better, but I really didn’t know how to do that.”

For Gholar, it was two events that would turn him onto a different path. One, a close friend who
told Gholar not to follow him into an alley one day got killed there.

A little later, some lifeguards at Sherman Park, 54th Street and Racine Avenue, took a liking in the
street savvy kid.

The Sherman Park lifeguards decided to teach Gholar how to swim, and how to perform
lifesaving techniques.

“I was very young at the time, but I was able to succeed because I was a people’s person, and
they also saw me as very hard working,” Gholar said. “I had actually saved a lady and man out of
Sherman Park lagoon in 1998. The man drove his car into the lagoon, and I saw it as I was
walking home. And I saved both of them.”

Gholar never received an award for his valiant efforts, but he said some people in the park district
heard about his good deed, and it paid off by him being made a mate lifeguard.

“By the time of my third year in life guarding, I was actually a mate for the Chicago Park District,
which I ran West Pullman Park and I had six lifeguards under me,” Gholar said.

Gholar discovered that he could save lives, but he wasn’t quite ready to give up his other life,
continuing to ride around and engage in criminal behavior with his fellow gang members.

“One day, this guy at the pool told me that I didn’t want to do nothing with my life,” Gholar
recalled. “He said all I seemed to want to do was sit up and gang bang. But becoming a lifeguard
helped me to see more of what I wanted to do. Seeing the kids come up to the pool with nowhere
to go in morning. So the pool became like their salvation.”

Gholar soon found himself moving away from his lifeguard position at Sherman Park and using
his training at Stateway Gardens Projects at 37th and State streets.

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At Stateway, Gholar would continue his knack for saving lives. He helped rescue a little girl who
swallowed a penny. That rescue situation would lead to him meeting the all African American
firefighting company of Engine 16, and sparking the young man’s dream of becoming one of them
someday.

“Engine Company 16 was based out of 4005 S. Dearborn Ave. And I told this guy I wanted to
become a firefighter. He told me to come down and visit the station,” Gholar said.

Seeing it as an opportunity, Gholar didn’t hesitate taking the fireman, Albert Shaw, up on his open
invitation to visit the firehouse.

“I went there the first time and fell in love with it,” Gholar recalled. “I didn’t even want to go home
that night. I begged and pleaded with them to let me spend a night at the fire station. So they
called my mother and got permission for me to stay overnight. Ever since then I was riding with
Chicago.

“Those guys were just fantastic! They helped me get myself together in school. They helped me
stay off the streets during the weekends. I was at the firehouse.”

Shaw soon became Gholar’s mentor, teaching him and others students at Englewood High
School lifesaving techniques through a program called the Save A Life Foundation.

SALF is a non-profit organization that uses Emergency Medical Service technicians to go into
area elementary and high schools and teach students cardio-pulmonary resuscitation. The
national organization is an affiliate of the U.S. Homeland Security Citizen Corps. It has trained
more than 1 million students in the state on lifesaving techniques since its inception in1993.

Gholar has recently been promoted to national education coordinator for SALF.

“It changed my perspective a lot about the community,” Gholar said. “How that happened is by
me going up into the schools teaching kids who were basically my age coming out a year or two
after me. It just made me want to do more for the community and be a role model to them.”

Carol Spizzirri, president and founder of SALF, located in Schiller Park, became impressed with
Gholar’s desire to help other young people from his community from the moment they met.

“Saquan, as with many of the young people, you treat them and respect them as adults,” Spizzirri
said. “They then become so eager to learn and want to help. All you have to do is give them the
tools on how to save a life.

“When kids come into the world, they are very selfish. They want to be fed and taken care of. You
have to teach them how to care.”

Gholar’s fascination with the SALF program and firefighting impressed Shaw so much that he
decided to help finance him through EMS school at age 18.

Eventually, some members of the Black Stone Rangers also saw that Gholar was more interested
in saving lives instead of harming them, and they too began to financially support him through
EMS school.

“They gave me the money to get my EMS technician license,” Gholar said. “Those were some
pretty amazing guys to invest me in like that.”

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By the time Gholar turned 20, he was knocking on the doors of various firehouses in the city and
its surrounding suburbs, but not finding much luck in securing a job. He also was working as an
instructor for SALF.

“He worked his way up,” Spizzirri said. “He could drive, but he didn’t have a car. He would pick up
all of the mannequins and load them onto a shopping cart. He would load up everything and put it
on the bus, and then he would go from school to school on the bus, because he believed in us. I
didn’t know he was doing this until after he actually saved up enough money to buy a car.”

Eventually, Gholar would find employment in 2002 with ER Ambulance in the city, and the
following year moved to his current job in Hometown as both a firefighter and EMT.

Success, however, hasn’t come without its problems. Many all white firehouses, like Hometown,
didn’t want to give the young Black firefighter a chance.

“It was like an undercover thing,” Gholar said. “I would come in and fill out an application but I
could tell there was no interest from the moment they saw me. In some cases I was called the ‘N’
word.

“But what I would do, I would take that and turn it into something positive. I would say to some of
them, ‘Since you want to call me that, I’m going to take that and just become better than you.’

“I’ve gotten into fights, arguments at fire scenes, but it was just an overcoming process. It was a
negative that I turned into a positive. And I’ve told them that I’m not going anywhere. The reason I
told them that is because if I leave they won’t hire another Black.”

There was one secret Gholar was holding when he was seeking his first job as a firefighter that
could have easily derailed the strides he had made in life: he didn’t have a high school diploma,
which was required.

When asked how he achieved so much without it, Gholar smiled and replied “through the grace of
God.”

“I went back and actually got my high school diploma through the American School in 2001,”
Gholar said. “I was actually so scared to tell my superiors because I wanted it so badly, and I was
afraid they were going to kick me out (of the fire academy).”

Gholar has now moved back into the same community that once beckoned him to the streets. He
wears his uniform with pride and young boys come up to him and tell him that they want to be a
firefighter or lifeguard one day.

And Gholar tells those kids they can do it, regardless of their past.

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