(l-r) Firefighters Josh Ward, Chris Latham, Todd Witt, Tray Sorenson and Kevin Ambler recently competed and won the 911 Fitness Challenge. - Photo by Terry Miller

The “Westside Anchors” will donate the winning funds to the Pasadena Ronald McDonald House where the department is involved in an ongoing basis remodeling rooms, cooking meals and running errands for patients.

A team of five City of Pasadena firefighters, known as the “Westside Anchors,” recently beat 1,600 other public safety teams in the Western Region to come out on top of the “911 Fitness Challenge.”

The “Westside Anchors” consists of Pasadena firefighters Todd Witt, Chris Latham, Josh Ward, Kevin Ambler and Tray Sorensen.

The “911 Fitness Challenge” is a weight loss contest for the public safety population to lose fat and gain muscle as a team. This approach promotes teamwork, camaraderie and friendly competition. Four winning teams with the greatest improvement won $5,000 from each region. The regions represented in the challenge included the southeast, central, western, and northeast. To become eligible to participate in the challenge each team member was required to be an active or retired police officer, firefighter, paramedic, EMS, military, corrections officer, nurse or physicians. Even the spouses for any of these occupations that fell under the 911 responder category were eligible to participate. Collectively, the four firefighters lost 120 pounds in a 12-week period and even competed amongst other Pasadena firefighting teams from other stations.