For many of us, Drew Kostal is a hero as soon as he puts on his firefighter’s uniform.
But on Monday, he went above and beyond his normal duties to perform a quiet act of kindness for a family in need.
Kosta, an engineer with the Vacaville Fire Department, received a call for help at the Vacaville Courtyard Marriott – like countless calls he’s received in his 16 years with the department.
"The call we received came in as a shortness of breath, so we made our way over to the scene and realized there was no breath,” Kostal said.
Adolphus Thomas, 88, was brought to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead as a result of cardiac arrest. But Kostal and his team were not done helping. They went back to the hotel where Thomas had been staying to gather his items.
“Mr. Kostal said, I want you to go ahead and put the room charge on my personal card,” Courtyard Marriott manager Andrea McPeak said.
“It felt like the right thing to do,” Kostal said. “That was about it.”
Kostal didn’t want praise. He didn’t even want his fellow firefighters to know he had picked up the $160 bill. But when Chief Kris Concepcion found out, he felt the need to share the act of kindness on the department’s Facebook page.
“You hear all the bad things happening every day, and then you hear something like this,” Concepcion said.
ABC10 News was able to track down Thomas’s daughter, Leslie Jackson, and his girlfriend, Idella Roberts. Roberts had been with Thomas when he began having trouble breathing, but neither she nor Jackson knew who had paid for the bill.
“For him to do that, it’s just special. It touched our heart to know that there are good people in the world named Drew," Roberts said.
As for Kostal, he said the gesture was what he would want someone to do for his own family. It was also an opportunity to pay forward the acts of kindness he had received over the past two weeks fighting the Soberanes fire.
“We went out to dinner on our days off, and people took care of us. ‘Your bill is taken care of,’” Kostal said. “It felt good to receive, but it does feel better to give."