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Retired Fire Chief John Mulligan
A Poudre Fire Authority (PFA) legacy, Retired Fire Chief John Mulligan, passed away on Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. He lived a life defined by leadership, public service, and a pioneering spirit. From the start of his fire career in California, to his long-standing impact at PFA, his contributions changed the way fire departments operate across the country.
“We have him to thank for what we have today, both locally and nationally,” said PFA Battalion Chief Jim Pietrangelo, who worked for Mulligan for 17 years.
Mulligan set the groundwork and led the people that transformed PFA into a destination fire department.
“Everyone wanted to work here and departments across the country modeled programs after what we were doing,” said Pietrangelo.
Before he found the fire service, Mulligan was an insurance salesman, a fact which helped inspire Pietrangelo to apply after they met in 1989.
“That gave me hope that I could do it,” he said about the daunting idea of changing careers.
Mulligan was just 34 years old when he became the fire chief of the then Fort Collins Fire Department in 1978. He had been passed over by a large metropolitan department for being too young for command. However, Mulligan impressed a member of the Fort Collins hiring board and was asked to apply for the Fort Collins fire chief job and was hired.
Mulligan began his fire career in California, working for over 10 years in the state. He was a firefighter with the West Covina Fire Department, a battalion chief with the Foothills Fire District, and chief of the Lompoc Fire Department.
After being hired in Fort Collins, it didn’t take him long to start shaking things up in the best way possible. Chief Willis (then fire chief of the Poudre Valley Fire Department) and Mulligan worked out an automatic-aid agreement that would erase district lines and create a way for two jurisdictions to serve much more effectively.
“Closest engine” response was born, something PFA still uses today. Jurisdiction or “station areas” would no longer dictate who responded, but rather which crew and unit could get there fastest.
“When someone has a fire, they want to see firemen there quickly, and they really don’t care who they are or where they’ve come from,” Mulligan said at the time.
Before the agreement, there were stories of a Poudre Valley Fire Department engine having to drive across town to a fire on the other side, passing Fort Collins Fire Department stations along the way.
Thanks to this agreement, the community essentially doubled its number of fire stations – instead of each department having three stations, there were now six stations serving everyone. This shortened response times in 95 percent of the automatic-aid area.
By 1979, the two departments had combined their fire prevention bureaus, training teams, and some administrative functions. The chiefs began exploring the possibility of taking it further and merging the departments.
On November 19, 1980, the Fort Collins City Council approved an intergovernmental agreement which established the Fort Collins – Poudre Valley Fire Authority. The name was later changed to Poudre Fire Authority.
Mulligan’s tenure at PFA would last until his retirement in 2011 and included major incidents like a home fire caused by arson which claimed the lives of four people in 1985. The largest incident he oversaw was the Spring Creek Flood in 1997, a 500-year flood event.
“In his final days, his thoughts often returned to these moments. He frequently revisited these incidents in his mind, his drive to serve the community and save lives was ever-present,” wrote his daughter Shawnie Mulligan.
Beyond his local impact, he played a role in national safety, most notably through his work structuring federal hazardous materials regulations while chairing the International Association of Fire Chiefs’ Hazmat Committee.
“Chief Mulligan had a tremendous impact on the PFA and in the fire service during his 33 years as Chief,” said current PFA Fire Chief Derek Bergsten.
His influence extended across all levels of leadership. He served as President of the Colorado Fire Chiefs Association, where he represented the interests of fire chiefs statewide, and was a key member of the Uniform Fire Code Drafting Committee. In this role, he helped develop and amend the essential national standards for fire prevention and safety that continue to protect first responders and the community today.
The family has opened the invitation to his celebration of life to the full community and many members of PFA will be attending.
Retired Fire Chief John Mulligan’s Celebration of Life Details
Friday, January 23rd at 10 a.m.
Timberline Church, South Auditorium
2908 S. Timberline Road, Fort Collins, Colorado.
A reception will immediately follow at the church, and a private graveside service will be held afterward.
All sworn PFA members are wearing a black band (a badge shroud) over their badges for 30 days to honor him.
The family has asked that instead of flowers or other gifts, please donate to First Responder Trauma Services here: www.frts911.com/copy-2-of-become-a-sponsor
Lieutenant Tom Pickles
Originally published 2024. Updated November 2025.
“It was the only time I got medals for being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Poudre Fire Authority (PFA) Lieutenant Tom Pickles.
That wrong place and wrong time were just outside the city of Najaf, Iraq on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, 2004, and the medals were the Army Commendation Medal with Valor and the Purple Heart.
His battalion had just spent 72 hours in heavy fighting through the Battle of Najaf and finally made an exit when their convoy was hit with a complex attack of small arms fire and an improvised explosive device or IED.
Pickles was an infantry medic at the time and had just turned 24 years old. He was severely wounded in the attack. “The hardest part was knowing I was there to support my guys and I couldn’t,” he said.
The story of how Pickles, the oldest of two kids, who moved a lot growing up, ended up on the frontlines in Iraq starts long before that day.
His father served in the Navy for 40 years, so Pickles was familiar with a life of service from a very young age. He always loved science and was drawn to service and intense, fast paced working environments. He started college as a microbiology major at Purdue University in Indiana before transferring to Colorado State University. (CSU) Purdue was a little close to home and he wanted to be near the mountains.
“I was one of those people that realized a little too late that my major wasn’t quite what I pictured it to be,” said Pickles.
He had imagined a high stakes environment controlling and working with viruses but realized that wasn’t the typical career.
He was in his senior year of college when something happened that would change his life and the world forever – the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
“I went to the recruiting office the day after 9/11,” he said. The calling gradually dawned on him as he watched the attacks and the aftermath unfold. “9/11 was like a kick in the gut, I felt helpless watching that going on. I felt like this was my one way of doing anything about it.”
He signed his intent papers at the recruitment office that day. Little did he know that several people from PFA, who would be his fire service family many years later, were also called to service and deployed to the aftermath of the attacks.
Pickles went to basic training the following spring followed by Advance Individual Training for medics. He left for his first deployment in Iraq just a couple weeks after that at the age of 22.
Because of his education and experience, Pickles could have enlisted as an officer in the army but that was not what he was looking for. “I knew we would be going to war. I wanted to do something to protect them … I wanted to be on the frontlines helping our soldiers.”
“My family was incredibly supportive,” he said. “They were worried, especially my mom, but always supportive.”
There was actually a time when Pickles and his father were in Iraq at the same time. He was assigned to his father’s safety entourage (unbeknownst to both him and his father). Pickle's executive officer helped arrange the assignment, which Pickles was initially frustrated by because he didn’t want to leave his men and the front line. When he realized who the assignment was for, he was thankful. His father was shocked to get off a plane in Iraq and see his only son waiting there for him.
He would go on to four official deployments in the Middle East including one continuous double tour in Iraq. He did additional duty assignments in El Salvador and Germany and served a total of 11 years active duty and five years reserve in the army.
“As a special operations medic, I got some unique opportunities,” he said.
Flash back to Nov. 11, 2004, and the attack. Pickles had been stationed in Iraq for over a year on an extended deployment. He and his fellow troops were on assignment in An Najaf, a city of around 700,000 in central Iraq, about 100 miles south of Bagdad. Their mission was to slowly move the frontline forward by taking control of compounds within the city. By this time, the Iraqi Army had been defeated but a group of remaining extreme ideologists had formed a dangerous insurgency.
After 72 hours of fighting and surprised to have survived the battle at all, the convoy tried for an exit. “It was very heavy fighting; you’re surrounded but that is the intent. The houses are so close you can get out flanked, so it was tricky fighting. We sustained multiple casualties, including one of the two medics,” said Pickles.
The convoy of eight vehicles and 30 soldiers (about the size of a platoon) were on the outskirts of the city when they were attacked. So many years later as he looks back, it seems blurry, he wonders if he is truly remembering those moments or the telling of the story.
He was severely injured. He suffered a lung injury, among several others, and administered a needle chest decompression on himself in a ditch as the fighting unfolded around him. That portion of the memory is choppy. His ear drums were blown out, his adrenaline was off the charts, and he was struggling to breathe, let alone speak.
“I was just trying to stay alive, just focusing on one breath at a time.”
He was able to get on the radio and call for help after there was some stabilization in the fighting. He refused medical evac until everyone else was cared for, which earned him the Medal with Valor, something he struggles with to this day. “There were others that did so much more.”
He was evacuated by helicopter to Baghdad where he received treatment, followed by more treatment in Germany, before returning to the States.
He could have received an honorable discharge but chose to remain in service and would continue to serve for another 14 years.
It has taken him a lot of time and surgeries to get to the place where he is today mentally and physically. To date, he has had 14 surgeries, with the last three on his hips.
“The surgeries help but each one gets harder to bounce back from,” said Pickles who just turned 43.
“I was an invincible 23–24-year-old kid in Iraq until I wasn’t and then you’re suddenly scared and it happens in a fraction of a second.”
He also dealt with survivor’s guilt, three of his fellow troops died that day. “In those situations, you are a soldier first and medic second,” he explained. “You are trained to help in the fighting, to stabilize the situation, before you can provide medical care, which can be difficult.”
After returning to the States he was fed up and tired of both receiving and providing medical care, but returning to work, healing, and building his life were important to him. One of the ancillary skills he was taught as a medic was veterinary medicine. They also provided care to livestock and service dogs overseas. So, during his road to recovery, Pickles began work at a veterinary clinic which was where the dark chapter took a bright turn. He met and fell in love with Alexa, who he would marry and have two children with.
“She asked me out for a first date for Valentines Day, but I was too dumb to pick up on signals,” he said with a warm smile. “It hit me while I was thinking about it later that night, so the very next day I asked her on a date.” It happened to be just as she was cleaning out a dirty dog kennel, something they still laugh about.
Even with his continued service in the army, he was searching for more, something that would allow him to serve close to home, be near Alexa, and start a family. He said that he felt as if he had left a job half done after being wounded. That is when he found the fire service and PFA.
He knew he did not want to work in an office, and he wanted to keep helping people.
“When I applied for the fire service, I didn’t apply anywhere else,” said Pickles. Fort Collins was home, and he didn’t want to serve anywhere else.
He was hired as a full-time career firefighter with PFA in 2013, which is when he transitioned to the Army reserves. He balanced both responsibilities for five years before retiring from the Army in 2018.
When asked about how he feels looking back on his service he said, “It took a long time for me to extract some amount of pride from it. I still feel awkward when I get thanked for my service … When you get out of the military it’s almost like an identity crisis, you put that uniform on several days a week for so long, but the fire service made it an easier transition. There are so many parallels between the careers. That might be why we have so many people that are veterans, they feel like they haven’t finished their work.”
He now teaches a class to PFA’s new recruits about compassion, which he says you can’t do the job without. “With over a year of combat, so much combat medicine, I initially disassociated from the hurt patient. They were not a person; they were a broken machine. I only thought through the physiology of patients. I later realized I was only doing part of the job.” His experience changed his skills and his mindset tremendously.
When he finally allowed himself to be medically evacuated after the attack, he was terrified, intubated, and hardly knew what was happening. “The bedside care and comfort provided by the nurse made more of a difference than any medicine they could have given me, it taught me that you can’t forget that your patient is a person who is scared and hurt … sometimes they just need someone to hold their hand and tell them they’re not dying today.”
This is something he not only teaches new firefighters but implements on scene with his crew as an officer. An officer’s role is to support the crew and make holistic decisions for the response during an incident. They don’t typically provide as much hands-on care to patients but give instructions and support since they are able to take in the entire situation.
Life for Pickles has changed a lot since he stepped into the recruitment office the day after Sept. 11, 2001. He and Alexa, a veterinarian oncology technician at the CSU animal hospital, have been married for 15 years and have two little girls, ages 4 and 9. “I love them to death, they’re amazing little humans,” said Pickles. His family has visited 11 national parks together, traveling in an RV. He even completed his degree in microbiology. Contrary to when he passed up the opportunity to enlist as an officer in the Army, he has found fulfillment in leading his crew as a lieutenant with PFA. “It is sort of the same reason I wanted to go overseas, I wanted to protect our troops and now as an officer I get to protect our firefighters.”