To know Firefighter Steven Pollard was to love him.

After all, to hear his colleagues tell it, Stevie, as they called him, was an officer's dream. He was a quiet, low-key force whom was committed to saving lives and always got the job done.

Firefighters, police, and other law enforcement from across the city and country lined Avenue S to honor the firefighter, who died trying to help two car crash victims late Sunday night.

"Steven was everything we want in a firefighter," Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said. "This young man was strong, smart, hard-working, dedicated, and, above all, he was brave."

The probationary firefighter had been on the job a year-and-a-half when he answered what would be his final call.

He was responding to an overturned vehicle on a bridge along the Belt Parkway when he slipped through a two-foot gap between the eastbound and westbound lanes, falling 52 feet to this death.

Timmy Klein was on Ladder Truck 170 with him that day. "Steven Pollard died not thinking of himself, but trying to help others. We lost a true hero that night," Klein said.

Pollard's father, Ray Pollard Sr., was a member of the FDNY for 31 years. Steven's older brother, Ray Jr., is an 11-year veteran of the city fire department.

"Bravery was in his blood," Nigro said about Steven.

At the end of the two-hour-long service, his closest colleagues, his brothers in blue, lifted his flag-draped coffin onto a fire truck with the honors that befit a hero.

 

 

 
"Stevie, it breaks my heart to know the days working alongside you are over," said Klein. "Though your time as a fireman was short, the impact you made and the example you set will live on in the hearts of Canarsie forever."

A fond sendoff for a fireman who his friends and family knew simply as Stevie from Marine Park.