Ex-Milwaukee firefighter dies from brain cancer: 'They just don't make them like Nick anymore'

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4 days ago

As Nick Adamski sat in a Milwaukee firehouse watching Diane Pathieu anchor the WTMJ-TV morning news, he turned to his fellow firefighters and set his destiny.
"I'm going to marry that girl some day," he declared.
Maybe it was Adamski's plan all along, but Pathieu was approached by a colleague of Adamski's while at the O.A.R. concert at Summerfest in 2007. He told her Adamski really liked her. Pathieu agreed to pass along her email address.
About a day later, Adamski emailed Pathieu apologizing for his colleague's approach at the concert and asked if he could take her out. Several phone calls turned into a four-hour lunch date and the couple was inseparable ever since.
The former Milwaukee firefighter and his Chicago TV anchor wife were together for 18 years and have spent the last four years sharing Adamski's story of courage as he battled glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer, after a December 2020 diagnosis.
He lost that battle with cancer on May 27. He was 42.
Adamski worked for seven different units from 2001 to 2013, when he injured himself on the job and had to retire from firefighting.
Adamski was recognized with an award by the Milwaukee Fire Department after saving an infant from a fire in 2003.
"That is a rescue award under extreme fire conditions at tremendous risk to the firefighter himself," Milwaukee Fire Chief Aaron Lipski said June 3.
"You never know until you're faced with these circumstances if you'll be able to move past how hot and dismal it is inside burning buildings."
Adamski didn't share his award with his wife until they moved in together when they got married in 2012.
"I never talk about it," Pathieu recalled her husband saying. "There was this fire and there was this baby."
Pathieu said Adamski then described finding a baby in the fire who was not breathing before reviving the baby and bringing the baby back to life.
Lipski said that child, at last check, survived severe burn injuries "over much of his body."
Pathieu said Adamski always "wanted to keep that inside" and that he "cherished it."
He asked his wife to not share it with others.
Adamski also never told his wife the whole truth of how he injured himself while on the job, ending his firefighting career. A fellow Milwaukee firefighter of Adamski's shared with Pathieu in recent days that Adamski hurt his knee "so bad, it popped" after he bent down to catch a colleague that was falling, putting his own body at risk.
"I learned that after his death," Pathieu said. "That's the type of person Nick is."
Adamski didn't dream of being a firefighter but a professional athlete. He was born and raised in Milwaukee and "his whole family" still lives in the area, Pathieu said.
He attended Milwaukee Tech High School, what is now known as Bradley Tech in Walker's Point.
After injuring himself, he could no longer play sports, and Adamski "had to pivot" on career plans and was into cars after studying them in high school, Pathieu said. But he ultimately settled on a life of service.
"I think he was thinking about either the police department or the fire department," Pathieu said. "I think he became more of a person who wanted to help others as he got older."
According to Lipski, Adamski was appointed to the department in October 2001 and went on duty disability in April 2013. He worked at Ladder 15, Engine 11, Engine 23, Ladder 14, Engine 31, Engine 14 and Engine 33.
Pathieu said she got to know a lot of his fellow firefighters over the years.
"A lot of them were at our wedding," she said. "He had a very strong connection to a lot of his brothers and sisters at the fire department and he would talk about them all the time."
Having dated Adamski since 2007 and after working in the Milwaukee market for several years with WTMJ-TV, Pathieu received a job offer in her native Chicago.
She would split time between Chicago and Milwaukee, working and trying to spend as much time as she could with Adamski. Her Assyrian background forbids her from living with a partner until marriage, she said.
"It was getting a little bit more challenging because I was getting more hours," Pathieu said.
Adamski proposed on Valentine's Day 2012, the couple got married in October of that year and Adamski moved to Chicago full time in 2014. They'd still often travel back to Milwaukee, Pathieu said.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Adamski decided to build a gym in the basement of the couple's home, where he and his father-in-law would work out in the morning.
A couple days before Christmas in 2020, Pathieu's father arrived at the home to work out and there was no sign of Adamski.
"Nick wasn't answering the door and all the lights were off and that was very rare for Nick because we both are very early risers," Pathieu said.
Pathieu, who was anchoring the news at the time, had her dad stay at the house as she furiously called and texted her husband, with no luck.
Then, during a commercial break, Adamski was able to make a call to Pathieu.
"I said, 'Are you OK?' And he said, "No," Pathieu said.
Pathieu called 911 and an ambulance arrived, where Adamski was found having recently suffered from a seizure. He was transported to a hospital. As Pathieu arrived at the hospital, doctors informed her that Adamski received a CAT scan and large tumor on his brain was discovered.
Doctors believed it to be glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer.
"Within the next day, so 24 hours later, he was unconscious with a breathing tube," Pathieu said. "And he had a huge brain bleed and they said, we need to go in and operate. We don't have a choice."
Pathieu sat alone in a hospital waiting room, amid COVID-19 restrictions, "bawling my eyes out" and no comfort from loved ones. The surgeon comes out hours later and delivers the news.
"We got the whole tumor. It's clean," he said.
Relief set in for Pathieu. "They got the tumor, everything's all good," she said.
But that was just the beginning for Adamski. "We quickly learned what kind of beast we were up against," Pathieu said.
Adamski was in the hospital for a week or two after surgery before starting radiation, then chemotherapy, immunotherapy and different medications.
The couple attempted to fight back the cancer and developed an understanding of methylation profiling, which is genetic testing on the cancer or tumor and finding medications that are not necessarily for that cancer but could work as treatment.
"For example, the gene that they found in Nick's cancer, a drug that tackled bladder cancer, was effective on Nick's brain cancer, and that's because they both had the same gene," Pathieu said.
When Adamski came to an understanding of the disease he was up against, he wanted to share his story.
"He said, 'That's why I became a firefighter. I think that's why this happened to me. I just need to help people," Pathieu said.
From that point forward, Adamski and Pathieu, who already developed an online presence as a journalist, gave speeches and interviews to different podcasts and TV programs, like "Good Morning America."
"I think he felt more empowered and he felt like he was taking control of his health again, and he felt really good connecting with other patients," Pathieu said.
Adamski had a mantra while becoming more known in the medical community — Positive Mental Attitude, or PMA. He adopted it as a way of life after reading "The PMA Effect," a book by motivational speaker John Joseph.
"People made bracelets. They had T-shirts made," Pathieu said. "It was kind of his way of offering hope in a very hopeless situation."
Everything seemed to be going well until June 2023, when Adamski had another brain surgery, and then second surgery in May 2024.
"A tumor had dug itself deeper, so it started to affect his mobility," Pathieu said, describing how her husband's ability to walk or talk began to deteriorate subtly. Adamski also began to have seizures more often.
The seizures became more intense in January 2025 and soon Adamski was back in the hospital. Adamski would never return home, except for a brief stay in hospice care at-home, before dying in May at a different hospice care facility.
Pathieu and her family helped care for Adamski in his final months. She recently took off from her role as traffic anchor with KABC-TV in Chicago and has made several tribute posts to her husband on Instagram.
A service was held for Adamski in Chicago on May 31 and then an Assyrian prayer breakfast was held in his honor on June 1.
A Milwaukee celebration of life is taking place June 6 at The Packing House, 900 E. Layton Ave., where Adamski and Pathieu routinely met for drinks after work on Fridays, near his then-firehouse in Bay View.
Pathieu expects Adamski's favorite orders from the bar to be available and maybe a few of his favorite musicians will be played. Adamski was a big music fan, lover of heavy metal and international bands, especially Ozzy Osbourne.
"People would often tell me they ran into Nick at a concert," Pathieu said.
An honor guard by the fire department will be present.
"Friday is really meant to be what Nick always wanted his memorial to be, which is a bar and good laughter and friends," Pathieu said.
Adamski was in the same fire academy class as Doran Kemp Jr., another Milwaukee firefighter who died of the same form of brain cancer in early 2023.
Kemp followed in the footsteps of his father, Doran Kemp Sr., who was also a firefighter.
"Nick was friendly with both (Kemp Jr.) and his father," Pathieu said.
Cancer is a leading cause of death for firefighters, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Lipski said the firefighters "feel terrible," but are struck by how lucky Adamski was to have a "positive" and "strong" partner in Pathieu. While for Pathieu, it was Adamski that kept her motivated.
"He was the love of my life, my soulmate, that whole cheesy thing, and we were best friends," Pathieu said. "I was just as obsessed with him as he was with me."
Adamski is survived by his wife, Pathieu; his parents; stepfather; in-laws; brother; two sisters-in-law; two nieces and a nephew. Pathieu partnered with a nonprofit researching glioblastoma. To make a donation visit fundraise.gbmresearch.org/campaign/694156/donate.
"He was someone who embodied positivity and just wanted to carry that on," Pathieu said. "And he did it so humbly and so eloquently and so beautifully.
"They just don't make them like Nick anymore. They really don't."
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Former Milwaukee firefighter Adamski dies from brain cancer at 42