When Mike Perry was getting started as a firefighter in the late 1990s, first in his hometown of Yakima and then in Lacey, the fire service provided a home away from his home.
His fellow firefighters were his brothers and sisters, and the bonds brewed over years of training and calls were unbreakable.
After 30 years in the fire service and about 21,000 calls for service in his career, Perry, 50, still shares those sentiments toward his comrades, but the mileage and trauma of the job have taken a toll on the decorated Lacey Fire District 3 firefighter and his mind. He battles post-traumatic stress disorder and has undergone treatment and therapy off and on since 2018.
When Perry is in the gym lifting weights or in weightlifting competitions, however, all of his problems temporarily absolve. The only battle he faces in those settings is the weight he sets in front of himself that day. Nothing else matters.
“It’s kept me focused. It’s kept me driven,” Perry said. “When I would lose my motivation to do things like work out or exercise, I developed this inner discipline, and I would just go whether I wanted to go or not.”
This escape has led to Perry qualifying for the United States Police & Fire Championships in San Diego in each of the last two years and the World Police & Fire Games in Alabama last year. In his two years of competitions, he has collected three gold medals, three silver medals and two bronze medals.
In the 2026 U.S. Police & Fire Championships in June, Perry set the event’s bench press record in his 50-59 age group and super heavyweight class with a 375-pound lift for his second straight gold. It was the most he had ever bench pressed in a competition. He also picked up a silver medal in the push pull at the national competition.
Last year, Perry, along with Lacey Fire District 3 Paramedic Lieutenant Brandon Dawson, broke the 40-49 age group record in the 1,000-meter doubles row by 16 seconds at the 2025 U.S. Championships. Perry followed that up at the World Games last July when he secured a silver medal in the bench press, bronze in the push pull and bronze in the 500-meter individual row.
Until last year’s U.S. Championships, Perry hadn’t lifted weights on a competitive stage since the 2009 World Police & Fire Games in Vancouver, Canada, where he took part in the “Toughest Competitor Alive” eight-discipline event and finished in seventh place. In that competition 17 years ago, he recalled feeling the same admiration for his fellow competitors that he always had for his fellow firefighters in the communities he served.
“I really loved the camaraderie and the brotherhood and sisterhood. Everyone’s there to win something, but everyone’s really supportive and encouraging,” Perry said. “They really lift you up when you’re going for those big lifts. It felt like a family almost. It was some good competition among fire and police.”
Perry’s competitive weightlifting journey started as a high schooler at Davis High School in Yakima, where he competed in powerlifting tournaments, and his storied career in the fire service came to fruition around the same time.
Shortly after high school, he debated between working in telecommunications or the fire service. Perry’s mother, a fingernail technician at the time, coincidentally found a client in the Yakima fire chief’s wife, who recommended that Perry apply to be a volunteer firefighter.
He took that advice and started in the volunteer program around 1996, as well as in a resident program in which young firefighters live in the fire station and run calls as their way to pay “rent” for residing at the station.
Perry then went on to join Lacey Fire District 3, where he’s worked for the last 23 years. In his firefighting career, just like in his athletic journey, he’s collected his fair share of hardware. He received the Heroes Award by the American Red Cross in 2010 for helping to save a 10-month-old in respiratory arrest, and he was named the department’s Firefighter of the Year in 2012. More recently, the department honored Perry with a medal of valor for helping save a young adult man from drowning in a lake.
Perry takes no individual credit for his accolades in his career, but he worked diligently over years to gain the trust of his unit to successfully take on life-or-death calls with them.
“It was a team. Everything that I’ve done here is with a team. Nothing is individual,” he said. “It was a gradual growth. I was tested slowly with big calls and seeing how I would handle those calls. It was put to me very simply by somebody a long time ago when I was feeling overwhelmed by big incidents that you’re only doing what you’re trained to do. I just slowly built up this confidence and this thing within me that said, ‘I can do this. I’m ready for anything that comes my way. I can handle the big stuff.’”
He sailed through his 20-year mark mostly unscathed mentally, but about a decade ago, people close to him noticed changes and that “something was off.”
“It slowly crept up on me. I didn’t know what it was,” Perry said. “I was isolating more and withdrawing more from people. I was withdrawing from work events that I used to go to. There’s all this accumulated trauma that I’ve had to work through.”
He traveled to Upper Marlboro, Maryland, in 2018 to a firefighter-focused PTSD treatment center called the International Association of Firefighters Center of Excellence. After that treatment, Perry felt the high of returning to his former self, but old habits caught up to him, and he struggled to follow through with his new life.
Three years ago, he took more than two months off from work and stayed home to focus on his mental health. And this past spring, Perry spent 41 days in Utah for treatment at the Deer Hollow trauma and mental health treatment center. He is currently on a leave of absence from work as he continues to grow from PTSD.
“I’ve beaten alcoholism, obesity, anxiety and depression. I’m trying to beat PTSD right now, which I don’t think you beat, but you grow. It’s post-traumatic growth,” Perry said. “I’m trying to grow through this. With some of the hard times that I was going through, fitness was always something that I could fall back on and nutrition, making sure that I’m taking care of myself, staying in shape and then having something to look forward to once or twice a year in going to these competitions.”
Perry has inspired others through his daily workouts and success at the national and world competitions. Local high schools have even contacted him to be a powerlifting judge at competitions, a full-circle opportunity after his stint as a high school powerlifter in Yakima.
Perry’s former Lacey Fire coworker and current Thurston County Commissioner Wayne Fournier recognized Perry’s accomplishments in a recent Facebook post.
“I had the privilege of serving alongside Mike back in the mid-2000s when I was a trainee firefighter at Lacey Fire. Even then, it was obvious that he was someone special,” Fournier wrote. “He is one of the finest firefighters (and one of the finest human beings) that I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with. Championship medals are earned in competition, but character is revealed in service. Mike has spent a career excelling at both.”
Perry plans to continue his record-setting trips to the U.S. Police & Fire Championships each year and occasionally to the World Games when the timing and location are right. Beyond the shiny medals won at competitions and trophies earned through his life-saving work in the fire service, Perry wants to be there for his brothers and sisters in the fire service who have put their trust in him every day.
“It’s given me confidence, courage, strength, and a place to call home when I’m not at my actual home. It’s a family away from your family,” Perry said of his time in the fire service. “That has been built over years and time. All we have is each other when we’re out there.”
