PHOENIX — Firefighters and paramedics said goodbye to another firefighter lost to job-related cancer on Thursday.

John Garza, a 20-year veteran of the Tempe Fire Department, died earlier this month of brain cancer caused by firefighting.

His fellow firefighters said Garza was the kind of firefighter who changed the entire tone of a shift the moment he walked in.

“You just needed to hear John laugh and it would make you laugh because his high-pitched belly laughter was what made him fun,” Assistant Fire Chief Kyle Carmen said.

“But hearing that laugh at four o'clock in the morning, it made the day seem so much shorter than what it was. It was great to just have that positive happy guy around,” he said.

Garza wasn’t just a firefighter. He was a brother, a caretaker, and someone his fami

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