Sweet firefighters let a scared 2-year-old paint their nails to calm her down after car accident

Two Utah firefighters flaunted their new manicures after letting a young girl paint their nails while comforting her at the scene of a car accident. North Davis Fire District Chief Allen Hadley and Capt. Kevin Lloyd received praise for their thoughtful gesture in a Facebook post shared by the district in October 2019. “This is how amazing our firefighters are,” the post read.

While the girl, Braelyn, was not harmed in the incident, the North Davis Fire District battalion chief and the captain saw she was scared, but they also noticed she was holding nail polish. Battalion Chief Allen Hadley and Captain Kevin Lloyd, in superhero mode, let her paint their nails. “Within minutes, the child was calmly painting their nails and had forgotten about the accident she had just experienced,” the fire department said in the Facebook post.

Because Braelyn is such a small child, the nail polish got all over the firefighters' hands. Hadley, for one, seemed very satisfied with his new appearance. “A lot of the colors she wanted was pink and purple,” Hadley said in an interview at the time. “But, I kind of got a feeling that she wanted to keep my hand pink and his purple.”

Jocelyn Fernelius, Braelyn's mother, said her daughter “was just happy,” which “made me feel like I could relax a little bit.” And it wasn't just the toddler who felt better after the manicures. “It just puts a smile on our faces too,” Hadley said.

The two firemen even posed for a photo with their new manicures, which included pink and purple lacquer on their nails. In the post's comments area, the small girl's mother, Jocelyn Fernelius, praised Hadley and Lloyd for looking after her daughter Braelyn, saying it “made her day.”

“She got upset when they told her that they had to go back to work,” Fernelius wrote. “I told her that she can see them again.”

She went on to say that her daughter was “in heaven” at the prospect of pampering the males, as she'd never painted anyone's nails before. “It was really scary,” she wrote, adding “[but] she was her normal, happy self today. Laughing and playing like usual.”

Fernelius, who is pregnant, told NBC station KSL-TV that she and her daughter were driving down Davis County's Route 193 when they were rear-ended. “I think they’re awesome,” she said. “It’s really cool that they would take their time to do that for a two-year-old.”

Brandon Fernelius, her husband, was not in the van at the time of the crash, but he agreed. “It’s nice that we can have a story that shows people still care about each other, in a world where a lot of people feel like they don’t anymore,” he said.