Fundraiser launched for Plover firefighter seriously ill with COVID-19
By Brandi Makuski
Plover firefighters are asking the community to give a little help for one of their own.
Plover Assistant Fire Chief Tom “Tommy” DeWitt is seriously ill with COVID-19. He is currently being treated at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., according to Chief Mark Deaver.
DeWitt, 35, was initially admitted to the Mayo Clinic in Eau Claire on Dec. 27, but his condition quickly worsened and he was taken by helicopter to Mayo Clinic Rochester. He’s been placed on an ECMO—extracorporeal membrane oxygenation—that Deaver said is similar to a heart-lung by-pass machine that helps keep the blood flowing and oxygenated.
“They don’t have a lot of these machines so he was handpicked by them,” Deaver said Saturday. “They want to use those for someone who is younger and strong and more likely to recover.”
DeWitt is not conscious, Deaver said, but “doctors say he’s doing as well as he can be doing right now.”
“Tommy is a community hero. He has faithfully and selflessly served for the Plover Fire/EMS Department for 16 years,” Christiansen wrote on the page. “He has saved lives, property, and protected the community in which he resides. He has rallied around the people of this community and has been a light to many in their dark days. Now, he needs his community to rally for him and be his light.”
Christiansen said the goal is to raise $15,000, all of which goes to the family for medical bills. DeWitt and his wife, CJ, who owns Wicked Willow restaurant in Downtown Stevens Point, have a four-month-old son, Tom, Jr.
DeWitt was honored in 2018 with the Medal of Valor after he helped pull a man from a burning vehicle following a collision in the Town of Carson, saving the man’s life. DeWitt has been with the PFD since 2005.
“Other than donations, we need thoughts and prayers, that’s the next biggest thing people can do right now,” Deaver said.