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"I was fishing this summer and knocked my phone out of my hand into Greenwood Lake," wrote Chris Romano of Little Ferry. "I remember being so upset that I lost every last picture I had of my father before he passed away and didn’t save anything on my phone."
Kucan fetched his scuba gear, went to the same spot on the lake and tried to find it -- all because he "saw how hurt I was," Romano said.
Kucan, 24, who worked as a Port Authority tunnel and bridge agent at the Lincoln Tunnel, was "a good man and friend to many," neighbor Gilbert Ruiz added.
A funeral Mass was scheduled at 9:30 a.m. Friday for at St. Joseph's Church in East Rutherford.
Visiting hours are from 4 to 9 p.m. Thursday at Kimak Funeral Home, 425 Broad Street in Carlstadt: (201) 438-6708.
"We are all at a complete loss for words," a Port Authority co-worker and fellow member of the fire service said.
Those in both aspects of Kucan's life called him still young with great potential, one who had a heart of gold and "would drop everything to help a friend," he said. "This is an absolutely tragic loss."
"We are all heartbroken and devastated," added Franklin Smith, a fellow firefighter and captain of Moonachie First Aid and Rescue Squad, which counted Kucan among its members.
Ruiz, the Kucan family's next-door neighbor of the past 21 years, established a GoFundMe campaign to help them meet funeral and other expenses.
DONATE: Fire Fighter Chris Kucan (GoFundMe)
They are "suffering from unbearable pain and loss," he said Tuesday morning. "I didn't know what else to do."
Others were left feeling similarly helpless.
"I don’t even know where to begin, I wish this was all a nightmare," wrote Tiffany Ann Tobin of South Hackensack.
"Tonight I lost one of my closest friends, the one I could call at any time because I needed help with something, the one who would let me steal his truck but only if I promised to make him brownies, the one who knew I wanted the lime green MK bag and drove me 45 minutes to the closest store so I wouldn’t have to wait for weeks for shipping," she wrote, "the one who would let me lead the way hiking and then deal with being lost in the woods with my for hours as we walked miles in a circles because I 'knew where I was going.'
"My heart hurts so much."
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