April 30, 2025
Hitchhiking Kitten Resuced by Lake County Firefighters Finds Forever Home
By Kyle Coppola
Hitchhiking Kitten Resuced by Lake County Firefighters Finds Forever Home
GROVELAND, Fla. — A stray kitten that hitched a ride from Orlando to Groveland is now living the good life with one of the firefighters who rescued it.
Back in September, Lake County Fire Rescue firefighters Anthony Huntley and Tim Roe responded to a call about a kitten trapped somewhere inside a vehicle. The car’s driver had just returned home from the University of Central Florida when she realized she could hear faint meowing but couldn’t locate the animal.
(Lake County Firefighters Anthony Huntley “right” and Tim Roe “left” rescued a wild kitten who hitched a ride from Orlando to Groveland.)
She told firefighters she first spotted the kitten darting across a road near UCF. When she pulled over and got out to help, the kitten vanished. Unbeknownst to her, the feline had climbed up into her car’s undercarriage and rode all the way to Groveland — more than 30 miles away.
After a careful search, Huntley and Roe managed to safely extract the kitten. With no one immediately available to adopt the animal, they placed it in a box and brought it back to the fire station to figure out their next move.
(Lake County Firefighter Roe took the kitten home and immediatly had a connection.)
By the end of the evening, Roe agreed to give the kitten a permanent home.
Fast forward to today, the once-wild kitten is fully grown and thriving — complete with a warm home, regular meals, and a firefighter’s lap to curl up in.
(Fast forward to today, the cat lays on Roe every evening he is home thankful for it’s new home.)
Photos – From Lisa Hollan Roe
Kyle Coppola was born in Newton, Massachusetts and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communications from Curry College in 2016. After traveling to Florida on a family vacation, he decided he could not get enough of the warm weather and made the move from snowy Massachusetts to central Florida 8 years ago.
For the last decade Kyle has gained valuable experience in social media content creation, marketing and sales, writing, video production, sports announcing and even broadcasting for local radio stations, such as FM 102.9 in The Villages and FM 91.5 in Massachusetts. Every year he volunteers at The Villages Charter High School as a play-by-play sports announcer for the football games as well as a public address announcer for the basketball games, including the annual Battle at The Villages Tournament.
Outside the office Kyle is a husband and father to two beautiful girls along with their cat. In his spare time he likes to spend time with his family, travel, play golf and swim. He is also a huge sports junkie and even bigger motorsports fan and loves to attend racing events when he can.
