College students lead busy lives with their course loads, extracurricular activities, jobs and socializing with others.

But there are some students who choose to add another activity to their already busy lives.

Fighting local fires and rescuing people.

Castleton University junior and physical-education major Dakota Garrow is one of the newest student volunteers to join the Castleton Volunteer Fire Department. He happens to have family ties to the fire department life.

“My brother is in the Air Force for fire science, so he is a firefighter up in Burlington,” he said.

Garrow also joined so he can help out the community that he is a part of now, as well as his community in the future.

“Teachers have summers off, so I was figuring wherever I end up I could do something, have an extra tool in my bag,” he said.

Castleton student volunteers Dakota Garrow, Zack Gebo, Ben Charboneau and Noelle Cave pose for a group photo prior to their drill.

Castleton’s Volunteer Fire Department has student volunteers working side-by-side with the rest of the volunteers in the department, and Fire Chief Heath Goyette is looking for more students to join.

“Our bylaws allow up to six Castleton University students to be in membership,” he said.

The department currently has five of those six slots full, but there will be three more slots opening up after this semester due to students graduating, Goyette said.

The volunteers meet every Wednesday from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. and participate in drills and meetings to prepare them for whatever calls may come through from the community.

“There’s always something going on here every Wednesday night,” Goyette said.

Senior criminal justice major Noelle Cave has been a volunteer at the department for three months and says that she wants to be a Vermont state trooper after she graduates. She saw joining the department as an opportunity to gain some experience with the community.

“I can’t be a cop right now,” she said. “This is the best way I feel like I can be in the community and meet new people.”

Cave also pointed out that joining the department is a “very good resume builder.”

Senior Zach Gebo also volunteers for his local fire department in Vergennes, Vermont when he is not in school.

Gebo recently began volunteering for the Castleton department, and says that for him it means more than a resume builder.

“I know back home the fire department I’m on is like my second family, so it feels nice to have another family closer to school,” he said.

Student volunteers set up a ladder on the side of a building during a drill at Fair Haven High School.

Being a fire fighter is not an easy job. Sometimes it can be life or death. For the student volunteers everything changes when they get a call.

“The adrenaline is absolutely out of this world,” Gebo said. “Once the tones go off on our pagers…the adrenaline immediately starts pumping through your body. Some people start shaking and some may have their heart jump out of their chest.”

With fire all around you inside a burning building there isn’t time to think about what you need to do, you just need to act.

Gebo knows this firsthand. “Knowing that you are inches away from something that could potentially kill you or harm you is pretty incredible,” he said.

Whether you are an experienced volunteer, or someone who is interested in starting out, Goyette has seen students go from starting in his department to becoming successful firefighters once graduating college.

“We’ve had college students that have come here and started with us and have gone on to be career firemen,” he said.