Firefighters Rappel Down A Cancer Hospital’s Walls Every Christmas — Just To Make Sick Kids Smile
Most fire departments spend the holidays decorating trucks or handing out gifts in a hospital lobby. The Sandy Springs Fire Department in Georgia does something considerably more daring: they rappel straight down the outside walls of a children’s cancer hospital, dressed as Santa and superheroes, just to reach kids who can’t leave their rooms.
The tradition started with a simple problem. Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta sits close to the Sandy Springs fire station, and department leaders wanted to do something meaningful for the young patients inside — kids often too sick, too immunocompromised, or too confined to treatment schedules to experience anything resembling a normal holiday. In 2018, the idea took shape: instead of visiting through the front doors, why not come down from the roof, right past the windows where patients could watch?
It took years of planning to actually get off the ground — or, more accurately, off the rooftop. Section Chief Kyle Sweeney worked to coordinate the logistics, and by 2022, the department finally pulled it off for the first time. Now in its third year, the event has grown into something the whole community looks forward to. On a Friday leading into Christmas, members of the Sandy Springs Fire Department rappel down the side of the hospital one by one — some dressed as Santa, others as beloved characters kids instantly recognize. This year, Superman and Spider-Man joined the lineup, descending past hospital windows to wave, pose, and bring a burst of unexpected joy to children who spend most of their days confined to a single room.
For firefighter Cody Minter, taking part for the first time this year carried a weight that went beyond the costume. His own son was diagnosed with cancer in 2024. Though the boy’s treatment mercifully didn’t require a long enough hospital stay for the family to witness the rappelling event themselves, Minter had heard, secondhand, exactly what it meant to families living through it. “Hearing all the stories about it and the impact and joy it brought to the children made me want to be a part of this event,” he said.
That’s really the heart of why this tradition has lasted: everyone involved understands, on some level, what these kids are going through — even if not always firsthand. A child fighting cancer doesn’t get to choose when their hardest days fall, and for many of them, this year’s hardest days happen to fall right around the holidays. So a group of firefighters decided that if these kids couldn’t come outside for Christmas, Christmas — in the form of Santa, superheroes, and a rope down the side of a building — would come to them instead.
