SEATTLE — The Columbia Center in downtown Seattle stands at a staggering 76 stories, hardly a tower that one would willingly climb up, but almost every year, Dave O'Connor does it.
"You start looking up and it's like, oh you're kidding me. What did I get myself into?" said O'Connor, a firefighter with the Nampa Fire District in Idaho.
What O'Connor chooses to get into every year, is climbing the tower via its stairwell to help raise funds for blood cancer research.
"And you're not going to turn around, because you have the support of everyone else going," O'Connor said.
O'Connor has climbed the tower 17 times and counting.
The Firefighter Stairclimb, hosted by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS), has raised over $28 million since its inception in 1991.
"I think I'm in okay shape, it might not seem like it right now, but the 20 minutes that I go through climbing stairs is nothing compared to treatments and things that other individuals are going through," O'Connor said.
He does it along with more than 2,000 other firefighters every year to raise awareness on something very close to his heart.
"Both of my grandmothers passed away from pancreatic cancer. My uncle, who I followed into the fire service, died from Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma," O'Connor said.
His father died from liver cancer.
LLS's Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Lee Greenberger said the climb is linked to what first responders were exposed to on 9/11.
"The implications are, that any worker that comes to a hazardous site where there's a major exposure could be at risk here," Greenberger said. "So it's not necessarily just exposure at World Trade Center. It can be exposure to any hazardous toxic site, particularly with a major release of hazardous waste."
"It truly, that day, was not just about the firefighters. It was about the community of first responders and everybody involved," O'Connor said.
The climb, scheduled on March 10, involves a climb of 1,356 steps to the 73rd floor.
"You know that as soon as you kind of get here, there's a timing table. I don't want to say you don't have a choice but you know what you're in for," O'Connor said.
But he said the grueling climb is nothing compared to what cancer patients endure.
"I think about the treatment my father went through, and my uncle and the things that they dealt with, and if it's just one of the things that propel me up, not super fast, but that I could at least do or at least is gonna drive me to get to the top, that's it," O'Connor said.
He knows the health risks he faces while he stays on the job as a firefighter. Tests have shown he has a predisposition for cancer. But it's not stopping him from being a firefighter and this climb.
"It's just one step at a time just like every day. It's just one day at a time. We're not going to look further down the road, just live for today and be prepared for tomorrow," O'Connor said.
76-story climb up Columbia Center tower raises funds for blood cancer research: HealthLink
The annual Firefighter Stairclimb has raised more than $28 million since its inception in 1991.