Last September, Nelson Cruz had an idea about helping the fire department back home in the Dominican Republic.
Back in 2012, while he was with the Texas Rangers, Nelson bought a fire truck and donated it to the Las Matas de Santa Cruz Fire Department, which provides service to tens of thousands of people in the surrounding area.
The fire truck was important, but the community is very poor, and the firefighters didn’t have the equipment they needed to safely and properly do their jobs.
Nelson wondered if there was any surplus equipment that the Seattle Fire Department no longer needed.