Growing up, everyone would always say how lucky I was, but at the time I was not sure what they meant. I was just doing what I always loved; skating and playing ice hockey. Everything seemed to go my way, from winning virtually every raffle I entered to scoring the game-winning goal whenever my team needed it. As I got a little older, I could feel these things before they happened, as if I knew that I was going to catch the corner of the net to get the puck past the goalie as time expired. I felt like the luckiest girl in the world. Becoming an Olympian was something I thought about as far...

This book is an autobiographical account of the lessons I learned about life and how I was able to apply them to inspire, motivate and empower others in my own work as a firefighter, as well in my daily life as a husband, a father and a man. When I was five years-old, my father abandoned my mother and three sisters, beginning a whole new life when he started another family. I never saw him again. This presented me with many challenges growing up, but even this heartache was overshadowed by debilitating injuries I sustained as an 18 year-old call firefighter. On January 13, 1980, while...