By Lori Ehde
It's going to be a long, hot summer for Luverne native Cory Mensen who works as a smoke chaser for the National Forest Service.
The 1990 Luverne High School graduate just started a two-week stint fighting forest fires in Colorado, and may work on the wild fires in Arizona.
His mother, Karen Mensen, Luverne, said she tries to keep tabs on her son through the media. "You're just on pins and needles the whole time," she said.
She and her husband, Mike, have been glued to WCCO TV this week, since a reporter from that Twin Cities station has been camping out with Cory's crew.
So far, the newscasts haven't featured interviews with Cory, but the segments have offered priceless glimpses into her son's surroundings.
She said WCCO has aired broadcasts from the reporter at 5, 6 and 10 p.m., but the 10 p.m. airings have the most information.
When she heard about the four Forest Services workers recently killed in a vehicle accident, Cory called her right away to assure her he wasn't in that accident.
"I'm so glad he called, because I would have been so freaked. We have a toll-free number for that purpose Ð so he can call from anywhere," she said.
"He's going to be doing this for a long time. He just loves it. So, I'm accepting it. He says he's with one of the most experienced teams he's ever worked with and that makes me feel better."
Fighting forest fires is seasonal work for Cory, whose regular job with the Forest Service is patrolling the Minnesota Boundary Waters in Superior National Forest.
As a trained smoke chaser, he's often called to out-of-state assignments to fight fires in late summer.
This year, with such hot, dry conditions throughout much of the country, the fire season started two months early.
This is CoryÕs fourth year as a certified smoke chaser, whose primary job is to squelch spot fires that flare up from burning embers carried by the wind Ð sometimes as far as a quarter mile.
In 2000, he spent a good share of time in Flathead National Forest in western Montana. The Star Herald interviewed Cory in September of that year for an in-depth feature about his work as a fire chaser. That story is printed below.