Cody Larque said that growing up, he always wanted to be a firefighter, and 2018 was a special year for him.
Larque, 26, was named the 2018 Searcy Fire Department Firefighter of the Year during an awards ceremony in early January.
“As a kid, I always played with firetrucks,” he said. “As I got older, I kind of learned a little bit more and what it was all about — it’s helping people in their time of need. It meant something to me from the beginning.”
Larque, who attended the Arkansas Fire Training Academy at Southern Arkansas University Tech in Camden in 2014, is all about saving people. In fact, he used his lifesaving skills on Nov. 8 to help a mother who ran to the station carrying her baby boy, who was choking.
“The hardest calls are anything that involve children,” he said. “We’ve run SIDS calls and other things like that. I made a save on a child. A lady came up to the back of the fire station. Her 1-year-old baby was choking on something. I was able to dislodge it and bring the baby back.
“That was a stressful few minutes.”
Alexandria Mansfield took her son Evan Scott to the Fire Department on Nov. 8, and Larque was able to use his training to save her son.
As Alexandria Mansfield ran barefoot to the station, Larque met her in the driveway and took Evan Scott and proceeded to position him face down and administer 10 back blows before checking his airway. Again, Larque thumped the baby’s back multiple times, before he finally heard the baby take a breath.
Searcy Fire Chief Andy Woody said the save that Larque made was captured on security footage from outside the department. The video was shared on social media, and to date, there have been more than 119,000 views.
“He was recognized by the city for saving a life,” Woody said. “He received a proclamation for Cody Larque Day on Dec. 12. All of those things — that was kind of the cherry on top, so to speak, as far as what he means to us and what he does for us.”
Larque said he enjoys helping people.
“When someone calls 911, that’s usually their worst day,” he said. “It’s great to be able to show up and help them and fix whatever is wrong and leave there with them feeling satisfied and feeling helped.
“At Searcy, we do everything we can, from fixing flats on the side of the road to the old cliche of getting cats out of trees, to dragging people out of a house if need be. It is a great feeling to be able to help people.”
Larque, who lived in Clarendon until he was in junior high school, is a 2011 graduate of Searcy High School. He worked in a factory until he was hired by the Searcy Fire Department in 2014.
“I worked in a factory before I got hired at the department,” he said. “It makes me appreciate my job a little more.”
While attending the fire training academy, Larque said, he learned the basics — search and rescue, fire attack and ventilation.
“I was a rookie firefighter,” he said about starting at Searcy. “I did all the grunt work that nobody else wanted to do. It’s kind of how the new guys roll. I did anything and everything that needed to be done.”
That is the kind of work ethic that Woody said he appreciates.
“He really just sets the standard for what we’re looking for, as far as his dedication on and off duty,” Woody said. “He just exemplifies what we do. In addition to his great work ethic, he was promoted to lieutenant in 2018. He also completed his bachelor’s degree in 2018. He was also awarded a designation by the Center for Public Safety Excellence, the first of its kind for our department.
“He is just involved in everything. We just don’t have anything going on where not only is he involved, but he has a role with it. He’s part of it, and he’s a contributor. There’s a lot of difference in those two things.”
Larque said he holds two associate degrees from Southern Arkansas University Tech. He received a bachelor’s degree in fire service from Columbia Southern University in Orange Beach, Alabama. He is also working on his master’s degree in public administration from Columbia Southern.
The night that Larque received his award as Firefighter of the Year, he was called out on a call.
“During the ceremony, I was on duty,” he said. “The truck that I’m on got paged out to a call. They went on with the ceremony. Everyone knew I got the award before I even got back to the station. The chief made everyone swear to secrecy. But all day of the awards ceremony, everyone was acting weird. They kept it a big secret from me. I had no idea. I was spending most of the day trying to figure out what was going on.”
At the same time, Larque was proud to receive the honor.
“It’s fantastic,” he said. “It’s nice to know that the people I work for and the people I work with — that I was able to make us all look good. It’s a privilege to work there, much less to get an award like that.”
Woody said the award is chosen by the department’s command staff.
“We discussed it,” he said. “The battalion chiefs polled some of their crew members. This year, there wasn’t a lot of discussion, not a lot of names to talk about. It’s nothing that I decide by myself. We try to involve as many people as we can and still make an effective and efficient decision.”
Larque serves on the department’s special-operations rescue team.
“We do swift-water rescue, rope rescue and trench rescue,” he said. “I’m trained in all those areas.”
Larque is also a member of the department’s accreditation team.
“This is basically a team of people that reviews all of our data and tries to improve our responses however we can,” he said.
Larque works a 24-hour shift, then is off for 48 hours before starting over.
“Just like anything else, we have slow days, and we have busy days,” he said. “On average, we get about eight to 10 calls a shift. We run fires, any type of technical rescue calls in the city and our surrounding areas. We run a lot of medical, first-responder calls. We’re all trained at an EMT level. We run with the ambulances on those calls.”
In addition, Larque is Hazmat-certified.
“So any kind of chemical spill, or the smell of gas in your house, we’ll be there for that,” he said. “If someone falls down or someone is stuck on the roof, we’ll go out for those, too.
“We pretty much do anything. If you call and need help, the Fire Department is usually called, and we show up and do whatever we can do to help you.”
Woody said Larque has a bright future with the Searcy Fire Department.
“The sky is the limit for Mr. Larque,” Woody said.
Larque said he has no plans to leave Searcy.
“It’s home,” he said. “It’s where my kids are going to school. I just love the city, so hopefully, I can work my way up the chain here.”
Staff writer Mark Buffalo can be reached at (501) 399-3676 or mbuffalo@arkansasonline.com.