Associated Press
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press
ALBANY, N.Y. — Since her firefighter husband died of a heart attack nearly four years ago after responding to an emergency, Kathleen Shea hasn’t received a penny in death benefits — despite a federal law indicating she was entitled to them.
She learned this week that the Justice Department reversed a previous denial and determined she was entitled to benefits under the 2003 Hometown Heroes Law. The law extends federal benefits to the survivors of firefighters, police officers and other first responders killed by heart attacks or strokes while on duty.
The Justice Department had denied benefits to Shea and dozens of other families nationwide, arguing that they were ineligible because their relatives died during “routine” activities.
U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, who sponsored the Hometown Heroes legislation, helped Shea and other families appeal the decisions, saying an emergency response was “inherently non-routine.” Now that the Justice Department has reversed several of the denials, family members of other first responders are less likely to face the same struggle Shea did after the death of her husband, Elsmere Fire Chief Kevin Shea, who had responded to a report of a smell of smoke in a nursing home, where the residents were being evacuated, and died in his car less than 40 minutes after the initial call.
Shea said she was surprised by the department’s “lack of understanding of what actually goes on when the fire horn goes off, and the position it puts everyone in - including the families.”
To the families, “it’s far more than the dollars,” Schumer said in a phone interview. “It’s just being remembered and not being treated poorly after their husbands or their fathers made the ultimate sacrifice.”