Exploring the Valley
Discover the hidden gems, local legends, and can’t-miss experiences in Black Mountain and the Swannanoa Valley as we dive into the perks of Chamber membership and uncover what makes this mountain town a must-visit destination. Whether you're a local business or just passing through, there's something cool waiting for you!
Exploring the Valley
From Beehives to Fire Trucks: A Chief's Life
Few people embody the spirit of Black Mountain like Fire Chief Coffey, whose roots in emergency services stretch back to his teenage years as a volunteer firefighter. Driven initially by the classic teenage motivation of escaping high school classes during fire calls, his career evolved through paramedic training, law enforcement, and ultimately to his current leadership role serving the Swannanoa Valley.
What keeps this dedicated public servant in our community? "The people," he answers without hesitation. "There's a strong sense of pride and care in this valley. Folks are welcoming, they step up for one another." Beyond his professional duties, Chief Coffey reveals the personal side of his life—raising three children, caring for three German Shepherds, and even maintaining beehives at home (a surprisingly common hobby among firefighters).
The conversation explores how Black Mountain's fire service integrates deeply into community life—from their small museum housing the original 1926 fire truck to participation in beloved events like Sourwood Festival and Holly Jolly. Chief Coffey offers insights on what makes our town special, recommending Highway 9's scenic overlooks where visitors can appreciate how perfectly Black Mountain balances growth while preserving its small-town character. We discover his morning ritual at Lake Tomahawk—"the best view in the valley"—and hear his humble reflection on the department's heroic Hurricane Helene response. Join us for this heartfelt conversation that reveals the human connections behind emergency services and celebrates the unique magic of the Swannanoa Valley.
Welcome to Exploring the Valley. This is Cheryl Hyde. I'm the director of the Black Mountain Swannanoa Chamber of Commerce and the Black Mountain Visitor Center. On this podcast, I'll be your guide to the people, places and stories that make our community special. Each episode will share the heart of the Swannanoa Valley, from local businesses and hidden trails to festivals, history and the voices of our neighbors. Whether you're a longtime resident or a first-time visitor, you'll find the pride of our community and the magic of the mountains right here. You're listening to Exploring the Valley, where local pride meets lasting magic. You're in for a ride, so buckle up. Good morning, chief Coffey. How are you this morning?
Speaker 2:I'm doing well.
Speaker 1:Good, Well, I'm glad you're here today. You're one of my favorite people here in the Black Mountain Swannanoa area and I've always enjoyed hanging out and talking to you and learning from you, and so I thought today would be a good day to bring you to our podcast. Exploring the Valley is the name of it, so it's all about the whole area. I think we've talked a little bit about what we do, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:You've heard a little bit of the podcast, but I just wanted to start off. I called you Chief Coffee, but I didn't tell you Chief of what. Chief Bottle Washer, I don't know, but you are the fire chief here in Black Mountain and I do know things about you. But tell me a little bit about how you got to the fire service. I know you started in a different service and then you landed over here. Tell me about it.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, I'm from Mattis County, originally in Mars Hill, and when I was a teenager in our community, most of the teenage boys back then would volunteer at the fire department. And to tell you the truth, when I went to high school, if you were a volunteer firefighter and there was a fire you could get out of class. So that was kind of my motivation to join. Started off as a junior firefighter in Mars Hill and then went through paramedic school in the late 90s and just started my career in Buncombe County. So I moved into Buncombe County just because it was closer to work. I've lived in the same house since 2002. I live just 15 minutes outside of Black Mountain here, but Western North Carolina has always been my home and my career has always been in emergency services. I'm also still a sworn deputy and have been for 22 years at the Buncombe County Sheriff's Office.
Speaker 1:Did you do that first, before fire?
Speaker 2:I mean, I know high school but weren't you Did volunteer fire got into EMS and then went into law enforcement and then left law enforcement full time to go back to fire full time and just did law enforcement part time.
Speaker 1:Cool, cool, cool. So obviously that's what brought you here, but what keeps you here? And what keeps me here is the people. There's a strong sense of pride and care in this valley. Folks are welcoming, they step up for one another and to me that's what makes this place very special especially're not leaving right, right, right, right Promise.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Okay, cause, cause you're one of my people and I can't have that happen. But so you are you. Are you married? Do you have a family?
Speaker 2:Yep, I'm married, I've got three kids. Holy cow, uh, three German shepherds as well and two fish.
Speaker 1:So you have, and two fish, so another German shepherd.
Speaker 2:I have a great. I don't. Don't tell my girls, I'll tell them.
Speaker 1:Okay, great, I'd love to meet your kids. That'd be great. So you work here. Obviously you're like when, when somebody thinks of a community and they think of community servants, community leaders, usually the first person they think about is the fire chief. People don't think town manager, they don't even think. I mean, y'all are usually the guys who get to be the happy face. You know, police get a bad rap, but we think of fire people as being, you know they're there to help, when truthfully, all public servants are there to help. But that's what people think about with you. I assume that people here treat you like that. Is that a fair analysis? I don't even know. It's kind of my opinion.
Speaker 2:You know, with any job you're always going to have that one individual that's just unhappy. Unfortunately that's on them. But we remain as professional as possible. So we but on the whole we've never really had bad interaction with the people in Black Mountain, especially me, in particular in the fire service. It's okay to have disagreements on certain things, but we do what we're supposed to do to serve the people.
Speaker 1:Yep, so we've got a lot. Our town is a lot of tourists. I hate to call them tourists. I call them visitors. I don't like the word tourist. It sounds like a baseball team I'm kidding but it sounds like it doesn't sound as welcoming as visitors in a Sarah Vacasey who's a potter that we've had on the show before. She always said that they are visitors because they come back over and over and over again. It's not, they're not like here one time People once they come, once they want to come back and visit again. But it's also a thriving business community. But how do you, do you all interact a whole lot with the visitors, or is it more with the locals, with the people who live here?
Speaker 2:A little bit of both. So you know, when we interact with the businesses it's usually on a professional level through fire inspections or, you know, fire alarm activations and whatnot. So that's mostly our interaction with some of the businesses, except around the holidays, like with Holly Jolly and there was one year for Halloween we went to some of the businesses and tried to do a little program with the businesses to where, if the kids had our bag and the business owners saw them using the fire department bag as their trick-or-treat bag, they would get a special treat from the businesses.
Speaker 1:I like that. How'd that work out?
Speaker 2:worked out very fairly well I like that idea um stolen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there you go but with the visitors.
Speaker 2:We have our small little fire museum where we have the original fire truck that was purchased by the, by the fire department, back in 1926. So that's usually in a small attraction that people like. But we've got a lot of visitors that want to take pictures in front of the trucks and meet the firemen. That's true. Since we're right there next to that town square, it makes it easy for us to meet a lot of different people.
Speaker 1:All right. So y'all were a huge help with Sourwood this past year and we really appreciated that it's not anywhere on our list of questions. I'm off the questions at this point. You can forget you should know me by now the ADHD. Those questions were just to try and make you feel comfortable walking in the door. You know it's just an athlete. If we normally do, we'll be fine. Oh yeah, no, y'all were a huge help with Sourwood this year and both you and the police department, and we needed y'all. But thank goodness we didn't actually need y'all, if that makes sense. But just having your presence coming around and checking on people was a huge help. And does your family come and do Black Mountain and Swannanoa kind of things or do they stay kind of where y'all live? Say, did they ever come once? Sourwood?
Speaker 2:Come on, yeah, we came to Sourwood.
Speaker 1:Did they come to Holly Jelly and watch you do your reading last year. Okay, so I know that you have family. I don't know how old your kids are. Are they little kids? Are they big kids?
Speaker 2:They're 14, 21, and 20.
Speaker 1:Holy cow, you're not old enough to have kids. That old, wow, okay, so I was expecting them to come watch you read the Night Before Christmas.
Speaker 1:This year they don't care about that anymore, wow, well, I know that you and Josh Harrell and Chief Parker and Jamie I know that y'all do the read the night before Christmas at the Christmas Holly Jolly Festival and I know that's a really big deal. I'm actually on that committee, obviously, and we were talking about it the other day and I asked I said, are we going to have the same people do it? They said are you kidding? We wouldn't have anybody else do it? Of course they're going to do it, so they're excited about you doing that. So y'all are really. A lot of times people think of the fire department and the police department as sort of separate from the town, but y'all really do. I love how y'all in this town, y'all are part of everything that goes on and we see you walking on the street. It's not like you're sitting in your office all day and we never talk to you, right? But what is your favorite festival or event or whatever? Be sure it's one of mine that goes on in town. I'm kidding.
Speaker 2:Well, funny enough, Sourwood being one of the bigger festivals, that is kind of my favorite.
Speaker 1:It's your favorite.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we do have hives beehives at my house, of course you do. So we dabble, we dabble with the hives. Some of my coworkers have a lot of hives, so just apiarist is a big thing apparently in the fire department Apparently. Who knew? Okay, I didn't know that either.
Speaker 2:But I like the Sourwood Festival Just. It brings everyone together and there's lots of different things, not just the sourwood honey, but there's, you know, the local artists that come and that's always nice to see. But you meet a lot of great people and because it's such a big festival, it brings people from all over the area to come and congregate in just one space and you get again. You get to meet a gamma of different people that fall in love with this town.
Speaker 1:That's right. Doug Morrow goes and meets every single one of our vendors. As he goes, he's our inspector. Is that what it's called? Excuse me, I'm sure that's offensive to call in the wrong name. He'll be fine, but Doug does go and talk to all the different vendors and it was kind of fun to watch him this year. He can be kind of, I mean, I guess a fire marshal. Their personality shouldn't be.
Speaker 2:Mr Fun, he definitely brings a command presence.
Speaker 1:He does, but it was fun to watch him this year because he wasn't what I expected. I expected him to be kind of hard-nosed, and these are rules. He was super nice. People liked him. He had to tear somebody's he didn't tear it down. He had to take somebody's tent down and they were like oh okay, thanks. Thanks for telling me they were nice about it. I was expecting something ugly, so that was kind of a cool thing for me to get to see.
Speaker 2:No, and he tries to educate everyone. When he sees a violation, he'll explain it to the vendor, and then he'll even try and come up with solutions to help them.
Speaker 1:He went back and looked things up and went back and helped them with it, so that was really yeah he is extremely fair. Yes, that was really he is extremely fair. Yes, he is, and that was. That was a nice. I guess I was surprised, because I always just think of the fire marshal as kind of Maybe a jerk, I don't know, not him necessarily, just that's kind of that's kind of their job to be a rule follower.
Speaker 1:I mean that's kind of what they're supposed to do. So what do you think? What do you think is the biggest surprise to visitors who come to town?
Speaker 2:the biggest is the scenery, the beauty of the scenery. Western North Carolina has all sorts of scenic viewpoints, but when you come to Black Mountain, I feel, depending on where you go and you can see vantage points of the town itself, I don't know, I can't describe it. It's almost something that you see out of a lifetime movie. I always feel like a Christmas Hallmark it. It's almost something that you see like out of a lifetime movie.
Speaker 1:I always feel like a Christmas Hallmark movie. It does, it does.
Speaker 2:But you know, if you go up on number nine, there's some spots where you can look back down on the valley and you see the town and it just looks like that small town vibe that you get. And you don't see that because there's, you know, go anywhere and there's overdevelopment and you're losing that small town feel. But Black Mountain seems to be balancing it very well with growth and still keeping that small town vibe.
Speaker 1:I don't ever think to send people online just for the scenery that's a great idea. We always send them to specific places, but I'm going to add that one to the list. Thank you, that's cool. So I work at the Chamber. I'm not allowed to have a favorite, but you are allowed to have a favorite. Do you have a favorite restaurant? Hangout hidden gem in Black Mountain.
Speaker 2:All of the restaurants and it's always hard when people are like, hey, where's a good place to eat in Black Mountain? You're really not going to go wrong with anywhere, because they're all so different. There is no two restaurants alike, so it just depends on what you're in the mood for. So what's your go-to? It's a mix of German and Irish, so I tend to lean towards a Berlin or Kendall, sometimes only because the food just reminds me of family.
Speaker 1:That's cool. You just went there this year too, didn't you? Yeah, so Roger was. He came to business and community club yesterday and somebody asked him what if I like German food, what else do you have? He goes we have a really great hamburger. I don't know why I never thought of a hamburger at the German place. I don't know if hamburgers come from Hamburg.
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1:But I just thought that was sort of like why didn't I think of that? I don't know. So I eat there too. It's one of my go-to places too, but we're talking about going there for lunch one day and getting a hamburger, because I never think of that. Yeah, you always think of regular old german fare, so that's pretty cool. Well, I've never seen you there, so I'll have to look for you. What else do you like to do when you're not working?
Speaker 2:when I'm not working, lake tomahawk early, early in the morning. And I'll say, unfortunately sometimes I've been not giving myself that mental break. But when I first started working here as the fire chief I'd stop off at Lake Tomahawk before work and just kind of enjoy a little bit of solitude before starting the day and getting my mind ready in a positive way. But yeah, lake Tomahawk's really nice. A lot of people take it for granted, unfortunately.
Speaker 1:And it's the best view in the valley.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, which doesn't make sense because it's down low but you'd think you'd need to go up a mountain, but it's one of the best views in the valley. Yeah Well, that's cool. We do try to not really talk about Helene, but I do want to thank you all for all the things that you did. Y'all were 28-8, not 24-7. I mean, I feel like y'all you and and the whole town management, everybody, um, really jumped in there and did herculean things and I just really appreciate y'all doing that I appreciate that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the, yeah the. It was rough, but I and I I'm not taking any credit the, the guys, the boots on the ground, they were, they're the real heroes. So they, they did. They went way above and beyond considering what we're here for, but they, they, they did some things that I'll never forget, for sure.
Speaker 1:Well, we just all appreciate you, even when we don't act like we appreciate you. I think a lot of times y'all get a bad rap and it's not fair and we forget so quickly all the things that you did during Helene and how things can just turn really quickly and you're the. You're either the hero or the home, I don't know, but we do appreciate all that. Well, thanks so much for coming in today and hanging out with us for a little bit and let people know a little bit more about Chief Coffee.
Speaker 2:All right, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Of course. Thanks for joining us on Exploring the Valley. Until next time, keep celebrating the pride of our community and discovering the magic of the mountains. In the meantime, you're free to move about the valley.