Tou Lo was inspired to become a firefighter when, at 16, he saw a documentary about New York City firefighters responding to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Now 25, Lo is the first Hmong firefighter in St. Louis wrote Mara H. Gottfried on January 1, 2014 in the Pioneer Press.
The Twin Cities have the largest concentration of Hmong people in the United States.