When a Tennessee teen became an intern at his local fire department, he learned that his bosses were more like family.
"The firefighters who sign my paychecks delivered me (as a baby)," OT Harris, 18, an incoming college student at East Tennessee State University in Tennessee, tells TODAY.com.
Eighteen years ago on New Year's Day, Lateshia Hall went into labor at her mother's house two days before her scheduled induction.
"I wasn't expecting OT to arrive but he felt differently," Hall, who has 13 children, tells TODAY.com.
Hall couldn't sleep that night and while using the bathroom, labor started. Her mother called 911 and members of the Knoxville Fire Department responded as the baby's head was out.
"I told the firemen, 'This is baby number seven ... and we're going to have a baby right now,'" she says. "One big push and OT was here."
Hall raised her family in Knoxville, never imagining that her son and the firefighters who helped her would cross paths again — until OT was accepted into Knoxville's "Summer in the City Intern Program," an eight-week paid internship for teens to learn about their local government.
OT, who is planning to major in English with a minor in education, will help the fire department with administrative tasks and social media strategy.
On OT's first day of work, he made small talk with a firefighter who figured out their connection. Word spread about the new intern.
Mark Wilbanks, the assistant fire chief and a paramedic who is OT's summer mentor, remembers the birth.
"I just assisted in the delivery — OT's mother did all the work," he tells TODAY.com.
Despite having responded to similar emergency births over the years, Wilbanks remembers Hall's "calm, cool and collected" demeanor — and cutting the umbilical cord of his future intern.
"Afterward, we cleared the scene and went back to the firehouse," he says. "It's just one of those things."
According to Wilbanks, OT has impressed the whole team with his charisma and motivation.
And of course, says Wilbanks, OT is "part of the family."