Cara Pouletsos got a special surprise from her local fire department, which honored her late father, who had served as a chief and commissioner, in the sweetest way recently.
For 50 years John Pouletsos served the Terryville Fire Department so when he died of a heart attack in March, a few months before his daughter’s senior prom, his former colleagues ensured her big night was still a special event, CBS New York reported.
To Cara Pouletsos, that meant having a photo taken of her father and herself wearing her prom dress but, since he could not be there for that special moment, the fire department fulfilled this wish on his behalf.
On the night of her senior prom, two dozen men and women from the department crashed the dance for that photo opportunity.
Cara Pouletsos was taken aback.
"He was there when we picked out my dress," she said of her father, according to CBS New York. "He was going to wait in the car and he was like, 'Oh no, I want to come out, I want to take a picture of you in the dress,' when I wasn't even sure what dress I was getting."
The fire department said it wanted to let the teen know that her father was with her in spirit that night.
"Cara, enjoy your special night,' The Terryville Fire Department said in a post to Facebook. "Your dad is watching over all of us from the floor above."
The gesture did not end there though.
Two days later, when Cara Pouletsos graduated from Comsewogue High School, the crew showed up once again to support her, this time with several engines, brush trucks and ambulances.
"When they called other people's name, [some of] their families would have an air horn and when they'd hear their kid's name they’d blast the air horn," the teen recalled, according to Newsday. "Well, I didn't just have an air horn. I had three fire trucks, an ambulance, a whole bunch of other fire apparatus, blasting their horns, blasting their sirens, blasting their lights."
Cara Pouletsos has already decided that she wants to follow in her father's footsteps and join the department as a firefighter in the fall with hopes of becoming the chief one day, CBS New York noted.
It appears that firefighters are racking up the good deeds lately.
In another heartwarming incident, a fire engine saved the day recently by filling a kiddie pool with water after a mom struggled to do it with pots and pans carried from her kitchen sink in Charlotte, North Carolina.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.