Sanbornton teen with love of firefighters helping teach '321 awareness'

SANBORNTON — By rights, Kaitlyn Hilbrunner’s loyalties should lie with police services. After all, she has helped local law enforcers to bear the Special Olympic torch in the annual run across the state, and has befriended local officers and chiefs. But to her, there’s something about those firefighters.

Kaitlyn, 17, is now all-in on the fire service, said her father, Kevin, and has been since the pandemic. He is now hoping to leverage that interest, as well as his daughter’s intrinsic characteristics, to help build a bridge between emergency responders and people with intellectual disabilities.

Kevin describes his daughter as having a “a bubbly personality,” someone who is approachable by strangers and admired by people who get to know her. Kaitlyn, who has Down syndrome, is a student at Winnisquam Regional High School, participates in bowling, basketball and track-and-field through Special Olympics, enjoys swimming and boating in the summer, and has discovered a love of live theater.

Of course, nearly all of those activities came to an abrupt halt in 2020.

“During COVID, we started watching a lot of shows on television, some of which we had never seen before,” Kevin said, explaining how she became enamored of the fire service. One of those new shows for the Hilbrunners was the NBC drama “Chicago Fire.”

Once her normal activities returned, Kaitlyn’s fascination with the fire service remained. She kept pointing out the Laconia Fire Department whenever the family would pass by on the way to track practice or to Funspot’s bowling lanes, to the point that her mother, Lynn, arranged for her to have a visit at LFD.

“She’s been hooked ever since,” Kevin said.

One day, when Kevin was perusing an online marketplace, he came across a firefighter’s helmet, unused, for sale for a reasonable price. He bought it, then started to look into how he could get it customized for Kaitlyn. He got in touch with Bullard, which arranged for a local contractor, Fire Tech and Safety, to inscribe the helmet as “Captain Kaitlynn Hilbrunner, Engine 321.”

The “321” is in reference to the more clinical term for Down syndrome, “trisomy 21,” and the color scheme is blue and yellow, the same for Down syndrome awareness.

Kevin asked if the helmet could be fast-tracked in time for Christmas, and it was. He found out afterward the blue he requested was not one of the standard colors Fire Tech keeps on hand, making it a more complicated order, yet they wouldn’t accept payment for the order.

The helmet was given to Kaitlyn as an early Christmas surprise Friday at the Sanbornton Fire Department.

“My goal is for her to visit fire departments,” Kevin said. She loves meeting new firefighters — she particularly loves to “ham it up,” her father said, by acting as an ill patient in the ambulance — and her nature makes her a great liaison between emergency responders and the community of people with intellectual disabilities.

It’s a fair guess that firefighters would interact with intellectually disabled people more often than most would, yet there’s no standard training for how they do so. Kevin figures Kaitlyn could help firefighters gain some comfort level or understanding, which might make a critical difference in an emergency.

“My daughter is very sensitive to loud noises,” Kevin said. “I know many kids with autism have that. How do you approach a kid who can be very unapproachable? Does a first responder know how to do that? ... That’s why I think it could become bigger.”

Any fire department that would like to invite Kaitlyn for a visit should email kaitlyn321awareness@gmail.com.