By Brent Walton

This was a great event! It was a privilege and honor to participate and help these heroes raise money for the care of the families of the fallen (but not forgotten) buddies.

Todd Eves of Simple Green BBQ and Out of this World BBQ-N-Products asked me several months ago if we would be interested in helping him with this event, I'm glad he did.

Kim & I met Todd around 5:00 a.m. that morning at a fire station where he had been cooking all night. We had pulled pork and tri-tip to get ready to serve by 11:00 a.m. over on Hope Street.

We met some incredible people and got to cook BBQ. Now that is a perfect day for me.

We were cooking with the Fire Chiefs and each Fire Station had set up a booth along about a 3 block area on Hope Street in the middle of the downtown Los Angeles business district. All of the stations cooked a variety of items to sell from Mexican food to ice cream sundaes to sell to the public for lunch to raise funds. This is sort of a competition between firehouses to raise funds. Some "smack talk" goes back and forth about who has the best and sells the most. All in good fun.

About 11:00 am the buildings just emptied out and a huge crowd assembled just in time for a short parade and a bag piper paying tribute to the fallen heroes.

They had a "muster" that different businesses competed in for prizes, also a raffle, a silent auctions and all kinds of items for sale.

Of course the BBQ was a hit and this event raised about $100,000.00 according to the news reports. Not bad for about 3 hours. This is the largest event of its kind in the nation and a model that other big city fire departments are looking at as a way to pay tribute to their heroes and families.

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