Heart BEAT

DAYTON -- Imagine the concrete staircase in a bigcity office building.

Now picture walking up one flight to a landing and another flight to the second floor in full bunker gear - 75 pounds of boots, pants, a coat, a helmet and an air tank.

Repeat this 69 times, seeing the red hand railing, red utility lines and a black sign with white letters showing the floor number. At least three times, your ears will pop from going from sea level to 788 feet.

Occasionally, you might run into other firefighters just like you, catching their breath on the landings or EMTs making sure you don't succumb to fatigue or volunteers cheering you on as you keep going up, step after step (1,311 in all), floor after floor.

That will give you some idea what Columbia County Fire District #3 firefighter Cimmaron Perkins witnessed when he participated in the 20th annual Scott Firefighter Stair Climb inside the Columbia Tower in Seattle last year to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

He's a couple of months from doing it again on March 11, and he's hoping residents of the Touchet Valley will support him like they did in 2011.

"Last year, I just wanted to see if I could do it," Perkins said about his first try at the grueling endurance climb that draws some 1,500 other firefighters from around the world. "This year, it's more about cause."

Perkins is the only firefi ghter from Waitsburg and Dayton who volunteers a weekend and spends some $500 out of his own pocket to scale the heights of the tallest building on the West Coast.

"I thought it would be cool if someone from here did it," he said about his decision to sign up two years in a row.

Last year, Perkins raised about $ 2,000 from local sponsors, ranking him as the 58th top fundraiser. His initial goal was $1,000, so he was pleasantly "shocked" when he learned how high he ranked as a fundraiser. The event raised $930,000 overall.

He came in 965th on the actual climb with a time of just more than 25 minutes. The fastest time is about 11 minutes. The slowest is two hours plus.

"What bothers me most when I go up is not the clothing, which doesn't breathe, or the gear," he said. "It's the dry air from the air tank. You feel like you have the worst sore throat."

Every four minutes, someone is diagnosed with a type of blood cancer originating in the bone marrow or lymphatic tissues. More than 137,000 Americans were diagnosed with leukemia, lymphoma or myeloma in 2010.

Perkins is placing flyers around town to draw attention to his climb. Last year, he used the stairs in his house -- all 20 steps -- to train. This year, he's using a staircase connecting 5th and 6th streets in Dayton three or four times a week for half an hour to an hour.

That has raised some eye brows among pedestrians or onlookers, who wonder why a fully suited firefighter is hastily making his way up the 57-step staircase.

"They'll look down to see if there's a fire," Perkins laughed. "They're thinking "what the heck are you doing?' "

No one will ask that on Sunday morning, March 11, when the climbers will gather in the giant lobby of the Columbia Center, group into battalions and head up the cement ribbon of steps every 15 seconds.

Last year, the 37-yearold Perkins "hit a wall" on the 62nd floor. When he fi- nally made it to the top floor, someone helped him out of his gear, gave him water and made a routine check to make sure he was okay.

Like a summiting mountain climber, "you don't stay up there very long," Perkins said. "You look around for a few minutes, you snap a few pictures and you go back down (via the elevator)."

According to Perkins' flier, "this is all tax-deductible

About Needs & Good Deeds

and every nickel goes to help find a cure."

If you want to help sponsor Perkins' climb, please go to firefighterstairclimb.org, click "donate" and type in "Cimmaron Perkins" or come to the fire station in Dayton to make a donation.

For more information, call Cimmaron Perkins at 509- 382-4281.