Saugus raffle winner delivered to school in a fire engine

SAUGUS – Firefighters pulled into the Veterans Memorial School Wednesday with sirens blaring, but the only emergency was getting Jiovanni Luciani to school on time.Preschooler Luciani got the ride of his short lifetime after winning a raffle that gave him a lift to school, courtesy of the Fire Department.”That was a cool ride,” Luciani said after climbing out of the ladder truck.Fire Chief James Blanchard said he was asked by the Waybright School if he would consider letting them raffle off a ride to school on a fire truck for a fundraiser. Blanchard agreed, but said he was afraid they wouldn’t get much response.Blanchard said he’s offered the treat to the schools in the past as a prize, but he said he wasn’t sure it would be worth the price of a raffle ticket.”Later I was told that between Bruins tickets and Red Sox tickets, overwhelmingly the big ticket item was the ride on the fire truck,” Blanchard said laughing. “I got the biggest kick out of that.”The ride wasn’t just a dream trip for the 5-year-old Luciani either.”I got to go too,” said his mother, Susan, a second grade teacher at the Vets School. “It really was cool.”Blanchard said he invited mother and son to the station last week to meet the men who would be driving him and to pick out his ride.”He got to choose between Engine 3 or the ladder truck and it wasn’t an easy choice,” he said.After some hemming and hawing and good-natured help from his firefighter buddies, Jiovanni made his choice – the ladder truck – because he said he liked the big ladder.Blanchard said next Jiovanni was treated to a tour of the station where he got to see what civilians rarely do.”He got to see where they lived and he got to see where they work out,” said Susan.”I got to see that one of the firefighters didn’t make his bed,” Jiovanni chimed in. “And I saw a fire clock where the chief stays.”When firefighters had to respond to an alarm, Jiovanni said he also got to see them slide down the pole and race to their trucks, which he also deemed quite cool.Wednesday morning, Blanchard said Jiovanni arrived with his mother and his father and step-sister in tow and before the group could leave, Jiovanni had to give his father a tour of the truck as well.”It was quite a scene,” Blanchard quipped. “He had to show him everything he had seen.”After strapping him in, Blanchard said he told Jiovanni to take good care of his mother and sent him on his way.Polite and well dressed in his khaki pants, blue button down shirt and barn jacket, the firefighters were seemingly just as taken with young Jiovanni as he was with them.Firefighter Randy McQueen said he got a big kick out of their littlest charge.”He was just great,” he said.Capt. Don McQuaid said it was a nice way to spend a morning and he thought Jiovanni really appreciated the ride.Blanchard said later that the men were also impressed with the turnout to greet them. Firefighters carefully planned the ride for 8 a.m. to try and dodge the always-crazy traffic that accompanies mornings at the town’s largest elementary school. When they pulled in, however, there was a flock of teachers and administrators and a smattering of students waiting for their arrival. With cameras flashing and lots of cheering, it could have been a Hollywood moment for Jiovanni and his mother.Instead it was just “really cool.”