By Lillie Davidson
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
FORT WORTH, Texas — Homeless outreach. Infant mortality reduction. CPR, Narcan and drowning reduction training. Connecting people with resources to recover from addiction or connecting them to more permanent health care.
It might be easier to list the things the Fort Worth Fire Department’s HOPE team does not do.
The HOPE team started with the Fort Worth Police Department as an effort to reduce a strain on emergency services caused by non-emergency calls from the homeless community.
According to Fort Worth Fire Chief Jim Davis, a fire station near the Lancaster corridor was taking almost 5,000 trips a year, with nearly 1,000 coming from a mile-long stretch of Lancaster Avenue known to have a high homeless population.
The fire department put its own HOPE team together to try and cut down on unnecessary ambulance and fire response to the area, freeing up resources for more urgent calls.
The team now covers pretty much everything that doesn’t call for a fire engine or an ambulance.
And there, at the helm of it all, is Fort Worth firefighter Lt. Sam Greif Jr. The 38-year-old father of three daughters has been with the Fort Worth Fire Department for almost 17 years.
Every day of those 17 years has been different, Grief said.
“Part of being a firefighter is just getting to go out and help people on a daily basis,” Grief said last month during a visit to the Bob Bolen Public Safety Center. “It’s never the same thing. You show up to work and you don’t know what’s around the corner.”
Greif has been working with the HOPE team since September 2019. He said he got involved after taking an idea to help homeless people to Davis.
Some days, the job sees Greif setting up donated cribs for parents whose babies don’t have a safe sleeping arrangement. Other days, it has him devising ways to get homeless people out of the heat, or visiting homeless camps to do blood sugar checks and insulin injections.
But, down to his genes, Greif will always be a firefighter.
His father, Sam Greif, was a Fort Worth firefighter for 30 years and served as the Plano fire chief for six. His mother was a volunteer firefighter in Crowley.
Greif said his son entered the fire service on his own, switching aspirations from being a police officer to enrolling in the fire program at a community college.
Their relationship is special, Greif’s father said, because they’re not just father and son, they’re brother firefighters, too.
“If you’ve met Sam Junior in person you know he’s a big man of stature, and I would say that probably his heart is as big as his chest,” he said. “He needed God to give him a chest that big to hold that heart because he just has a way with people.”
Greif’s heart is evident: his immediate reflex is to give credit to everyone else on the HOPE team.
“This is a partnership and a team effort. Without them, this would not be possible,” Grief said.
Officials with the JPS Health Network agree.
“Establishing the HOPE team has allowed us to collaborate with our first responders and improve care for the unsheltered and unhoused residents in Fort Worth.,” said Joel Hunt , a JPS physician assistant and the director of Acclaim Street Medicine. “We are grateful for our community partners and the dedicated members of the HOPE team who have been responsive and cooperative in helping to deliver high-quality patient care.”
Greif said there are dozens of stories from people the HOPE team has helped.
One that sticks with him the most, he said, is from early on in his work with the HOPE team. The team responded to a call from a woman who was addicted to heroin. When they arrived, she still had a syringe in her arm.
“She cried and said ‘I really just want to be done with this life,’” Greif recalled.
The team helped the woman get into a rehab program and reconnect with her family in Oklahoma. To this day, Greif said he believes she is still doing well.
Greif said there have been a few instances in which he’s run into people he helped while they were living on the streets and found out that they now have a house or job, or have overcome their addiction.
“We’ve been very blessed in the work that we get to do,” Greif said. “I’ve got a team that, rain, shine, sleet, they’re out there… I don’t have to beg them to go to work.”
While Greif only has two people formally assigned to his team, he can reach out to any of the city’s 45 fire stations and ask for help.
Davis said he’s looking forward to seeing what the team can accomplish once the Fort Worth Fire Department completes its absorption of MedStar, the city’s EMS and ambulance service.
The merger, approved in May, will see MedStar employees become members of the fire department.
The fire department is looking to expand the capabilities of the HOPE team once MedStar becomes part of the fire department, Davis said.
As for Greif? He’ll be where he’s always been.
“He cares about people, and he’s always been that kid that took up for the underdog and would try to represent those that couldn’t represent themselves,” his father said.
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