The year is 1988, and in Harmony, the Northgate Plaza BiLo store is burning.

Former Harmony Volunteer Fire Company Chief Tim Sapienza recalled being on the scene as Zelienople Fire Department’s Engine 7 came to their aid.

“I had them lay a 4-inch line from the old reservoir they had in Zelienople to feed that fire, to feed us,” he said. “They pumped us from the reservoir with that truck. It did a good job.

“It put out a lot of big fires over the years.”

Engine 7, a 1984 Pierce Arrow pumper, served with the Zelienople Fire Department until its merger with Harmony as the Harmony Fire District in 2015. The truck then was purchased by a private owner.

Almost 10 years later, the nearly 40-year-old engine has returned to the district, with the department seeking to return it to its former glory.

“While we don’t have any plans of putting it in as an active piece, it is literally just a museum piece right now; it still needed new tires,” said Kevin Behun, president of the Harmony Fire District. “Then it’s going to need some leatherwork done to some of the seats. There’s a list of stuff that needs to be done.”

Without the budget to begin restorations, Behun said the district turned to outside-the-box fundraising.

“We had bought a couple of leather fire helmets over a year ago because they had such a big backlog to get them and their price was going through the roof,” he said. “So we were able to buy a couple before they saw the most-recent price increase.”

A leather helmet, no longer the standard in fire services, now costs upward of $2,000, according to Behun.

“It’s a cool piece of history, and they’re still technically (National Fire Protection Association) compliant,” he said. “Everybody wants one; no one wants to spend the money on one.”

So late last month, Behun said, the department decided to raffle two of the helmets in an effort to raise funds for the truck’s refurbishment.

“Just through those two fundraisers, we made a couple thousand dollars to put toward tires and refurbishment,” he said.

Behun said the fundraiser was so successful the district is considering repeating it to help fully fund the restoration effort.

“Maybe over the years, we can make $4,000 or $5,000 a year that we can put in this ‘side pocket’ to restore it,” he said.

When the truck left the district in 2015, former Zelienople Fire Department Assistant Chief Rob Reeb said it left in good hands.

“A guy who joined the fire department got to be a good friend of mine over the years,” Reeb said. “He was a Detroit Diesel mechanic, and he always said, ‘If that truck ever goes up for sale, I want to buy it,”

So when the truck went up for sale after the merger, the district sold Engine 7 to Paul Crates — then living in Baltimore — for $7,500.

“Every year this guy owned the truck, he took it to the Harrisburg Fire Muster,” Reeb said. “He would draft water out of the river and shoot water back into the river with it.”

Reeb said Crates kept the truck in working condition until his death a little less than a year ago, when Reeb came into contact with Crate’s sister, Amy Tru, executor of his will.

“One day she called me out of the blue and said, ‘Do you have any interest in that truck?’ I said, ‘Well, I always have,’” Reeb said.

Tru listed the truck for sale after her brother’s death, Reeb said, but he was not able to convince the Harmony Fire District — or his wallet — to purchase it.

“She said, ‘I have the whole estate taken care of except for that firetruck,’” Reeb said. “This was on a Friday, and 10 days later the registration on the truck was going to expire — she was going to have to pay for the plates, pay for insurance.”

She offered the truck to him and the district without cost to help settle the estate, Reeb said. He immediately called Sapienza to talk over the deal.

“He called me and said, ‘What do you think, do you think I should?’” Sapienza said. “I said, ‘Let’s get it.’”

Reeb said he and a friend immediately made the drive to Maryland, attempting to beat the clock before the truck’s registration expired.

The goal was to return it, secretly, in time for the fire district’s open house this May, he said.

“Well, that didn’t work. We got caught,” he said with a chuckle. “We ended up at the station; people saw it and the word got out pretty quick.”

Leading up to the Fourth of July, Reeb said he was encouraged to include the truck in Zelienople’s annual parade.

“It was pretty sad looking — it had sat outside the last few years while this guy’s health was failing,” he said. “Instead of bright red, it kind of looked pink and faded, and stuff was dry-rotted off of it.”

But a crew of the district’s “younger” firefighters immediately set to work making it parade-ready, Reeb said.

“They stripped it down, one end to the other, and they polished and polished and polished,” he said. “It looks like a brand new truck.”

While Engine 7 did enter the parade polished, Reeb said more work was needed to return it to its former glory.

“The goal is not to burden the financial side of the fire department to support an antique truck,” he said. “That’s why we decided we want to raise separate funds and let people know that’s what it’s for.”

And so the fundraising effort was born.

“If I’d have brought that truck back, and the fire department would have said, ‘No, we don’t really want to do this,’ I’d have been finding a way to keep it,” Reeb said. “It’s a part of me; it’s a part of our history.”