HERNANDO COUNTY, Fla. — Those with Hernando County Fire Rescue are mourning the loss of one of their own.

What You Need To Know

  • Retired fire-medic Juan Pablo 'J.P.' Janssens died on July 4, after serving more than 20 years with the department

  • Janssens was a preceptor with the department, training the current crop of paramedics

  • Those who worked closest with Janssens reflect on their time shared and his lasting impact on the department

Retired fire-medic Juan Pablo Janssens, better known as ‘J.P.,’ died on July 4. Those who know him say he is someone who had a lasting impact on the department — a person who may be gone but is certainly not forgotten.

When it comes to firefighting, it’s not uncommon to be fast on the job.

“J.P. was that type of guy who was running at 100 miles per hour his whole life," said Capt. Jason Haas, a paramedic with Hernando Fire Rescue.

Someone who understood this all too well was Janssens.

“He was always a loud guy, he was a very loud guy, always animated," Haas said. "But that’s what everyone loved about him — a guy who walks into a room that he would light up.”

Haas said he spent a lot of time with Janssens working as a firefighte on long shifts — 24 hours on and 48 hours off. As Haas put it, they spent about a third of their lives together.

“He was the most compassionate guy," Haas said. "He loved being on the ambulance, he spent his entire career on that ambulance, he loved treating people and being able to help them."

During his five years at the station, Janssens was also a preceptor, training new paramedics fresh out of school, like EMT Joseph Alleva.

Alleva remembers the first time he was sent on a call.

“I just get in the back of this ambulance and I hear somebody just scream, ‘Bro!’" said Alleva "And I’m just looking around thinking, ‘That was a really loud bro with a patient right here.’ So I was like, ‘Who’s that guy?’ and everybody looks at me and are like, ‘That’s J.P.’”

His friends and family say Janssens had an infectious personality, probably best understood by looking at his picture hanging above the break room — or by taking a look around at the many paramedics he’s helped shape.

“We called him dad, just because clicked so much like that," said Alleva. "But the No. 1 rule was take care of each patient like they’re your own family. That was a very big thing that he taught all of us. No matter how bad the call is, no matter how minor the call maybe — it could be for a stubbed toe or something — you treat that person like they’re your family and you give them the care that you’d want your own family to get.”

Alleva said those were lessons you can’t learn in school. But only by having that experience with Janssens, that's something Alleva says he takes with him every time he goes out on a call.

“You want to be like him," he said of Janssens. "I pray that one day I’m half the medic he was. I mean, he was really amazing and just for everybody to have that attitude of, ‘I want to be like that guy,’ it’s really going to leave an impression on this department.”