Growing up, David Nelson could see Hazen High School from his neighborhood. So, why, he wondered back in the mid-1990s, would he go across town to school, at Renton High.

He made that point at a Renton school board meeting in January 1995 and was suspended for one month as editor of the student newspaper, the Highlander News.

He says he was speaking as an individual student, but the school board reasoned that because he was editor of the Hazen newspaper, he was speaking for the newspaper and ultimately, the school.

Would he speak up again? Yes. But Nelson says he learned valuable life lessons that have helped guide him as a photojournalist and as a firefighter.

“It taught me to take myself out of the situation and think about it before taking action,” he said. One of those situations was in June 2002, when, working for the Renton Reporter and the King County Journal, he took what would become award-winning photos of the naked man who fatally shot sheriff’s deputy Richard Herzog in Newcastle.

“It’s what helped me during the Herzog coverage to make sure I was making the right decision without being in the way of police officers responding to help the downed officer,” he said.

Nelson was a senior at the time of the newspaper controversy and graduated from Hazen High School. But the school boundaries were changed and students in his old neighborhood are bused to Renton High School, all in an effort to even out student populations at the city’s three high schools.

Today, Nelson of Renton helps save lives for a living.

He’s an emergency medical technician and a dispatcher for Tri-Med Ambulance and is a volunteer for Fire District 20 in Skyway. Renton High School is just down the hill.