Pekin Fire Chief Trent Reeise lives in the Pekin home his grandparents purchased in 1960. His two kids are the fourth generation of his family to live there. Reeise is proud of those deep connections with the city where he was born and raised, and you can see it in the passion he brings to the job he has held for the past three years.

“Pekin is a safe, fun community with good schools, good parks, and good sports and activities for kids to get involved in,” Reeise said. “It’s big enough that you don’t know everybody, but small enough that, when you get to a certain age, it seems like you do know everyone.” 

Reeise knew he wanted to be a firefighter from a very early age. He has been a part of the Pekin Fire Department since 2009, but his interest in his profession goes back to his childhood.

He often tells the story of hanging around the firehouse where his dad was a volunteer firefighter in a small McLean County community. One night he was “messing around” at the fire station when an ambulance door swung open and knocked him unconscious. He remembers his dad running home with him in his arms.

The desire to help others grew stronger over the years. While attending Pekin High School, he “really started digging in” and exploring the possibilities of firefighting as a career. His counselors helped him connect with some local emergency responders. When he graduated high school, he went on to earn a degree in fire science at Illinois Central College, followed by paramedic training at OSF St. Francis Medical Center. Later, he earned a bachelor’s degree in emergency management from Purdue University.

Over the next decade he rose to deputy chief in the Pekin force in 2019 and was appointed fire chief in 2021 after a nine-month stint as interim chief. Tony Rendleman, who Reeise describes as “the smartest, best person on the planet,” serves as deputy fire chief.

Reeise said one of his first priorities as chief was to assess the state of the city’s aging emergency response infrastructure. He found that the city’s population had grown in different geographic directions than what was projected back in the 60s and 70s when the current fire stations were built. As a result, the department’s facilities are not ideally situated to serve some areas of the city. And in many cases, they were not built to house modern firefighting equipment.

In addition, he found that the current fire stations are not ideally suited to respond to the volume and variety of services a modern fire department is tasked with providing. 

Reeise said the department analyzed data that showed the areas where most calls are received and developed a plan for where the stations should be now, and 50 years from now. He points to data revealing that the fire service fielded 800 calls in 1987, compared to 6,977 calls in 2023.

And that is with essentially the same number of personnel as three decades ago. 

Reeise said he sees himself as not just the top administrator of the fire department, but as director of an “all hazards department” providing emergency medical services, hazardous materials clean-up, emergency rescue, car accidents, watercraft accidents, and sprinkler system malfunctions, along with fire inspection, code enforcement, fire prevention, community education, and fire/arson investigation.

Land has been purchased for two new fire stations, and engineering and architectural work has been completed. But ground has not been broken for the new facilities. Reeise said he is confident it will move forward in the near future. “The city has constantly changing and competing needs and priorities,” he said. “Hopefully, the new stations will be back on track in the next couple years. We are a fire department with all the same issues as bigger cities, so it matters that we have the people to provide the services the city demands.”

When he is not helping to build the future of the Pekin Fire Department, Reeise has a passion for teaching the next generation of first responders. It appears that tomorrow’s emergency responders are in good hands.

The chief is currently an instructor in the fire science program at ICC. He has also worked with ICC to develop a dual credit curriculum that allows high school students to complete EMT testing immediately upon graduation. 

Now 38 years old, Reeise was a member of Peoria Magazine’s 2023 class of 40 Leaders Under Forty. He is married to his high school sweetheart, Tabitha, and they have two children, both attending Pekin High School.

“Being the chief is an absolute pleasure and our firefighters are second to none,” Reeise said. Although many call first responders heroes, he said, “Most firefighters don’t consider themselves heroes. They get more pleasure out of serving others.”

“At the end of the day, we realize that we get to be a part of something bigger than ourselves,” Reeise added. “It’s what we were made to do.”