BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. — From high school senior to firefighter: Jayden Cooper has been with Brevard County Fire Rescue for nearly two years.

This comes after graduating from the specialized academy at Palm Bay High School, where students learn college-level firefighting concepts.

“They gave me all the basic steps into fire, gave me a step ahead and got me prepared for fire school,” said Cooper.

Once that was done, he moved on to Eastern Florida State College’s Public Safety Institute to continue training.

“Academics is one of the hardest things because it’s such a fast-paced class. They already knew it, they went through the book before, they already knew what type of physical activities they needed to do being in gear,” said lead instructor Teresa Uzel.

The school district just announced that the fire academy is expanding to Cocoa High School and is looking to start up in other area schools.

One Palm Bay High School student, who just graduated from both the school and the academy, wants to become a firefighter for very personal reasons. He and his family lost their home to fire last year. Now, he wants to protect others so they don’t have to go through what he did.

He’s just 18 years old, but Timothy Owens knows what he wants to do with his life — fight fires and save lives.

While he was at Palm Bay High, he also trained as a junior and senior in the specialized fire school to get ahead. Now he’s experienced his first live fire training at the Eastern Florida State College’s Fire Academy.

“Just to help other people, so they don’t have to go through the same thing I went through,” Owens said.

Owens and his family went through a tragedy last year. Their home burned down in the middle of the night.

“Our dogs woke us up, woke my husband up, and he woke me up at one o’clock in the morning,” Owens’ mother, Shannon, said.

Every person got out safely, but some of the family’s pets didn’t make it. The loss of the house and pets motivated Owens to become a firefighter, along with encouragement from a neighbor who served as a fire chief.

His mom said she is proud of his decision.

“It means he can help another family, and they don’t have to suffer what we went through,” Shannon said.

Owens said he’ll think of what happened to him every call he goes on.

“Don’t give up, keep going,” he said.