{"id":259575,"date":"2026-06-08T19:42:33","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T19:42:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/259575\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T19:42:33","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T19:42:33","slug":"after-facing-lifes-darkest-moments-this-staten-islander-became-a-beacon-for-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/259575\/","title":{"rendered":"After Facing Life\u2019s Darkest Moments, This Staten Islander Became a Beacon for Others"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Edward Kahmann says facing tragedy changed how he sees life and personal safety. As a child, he witnessed his apartment catch fire in 1997. In 2013, he was at PacSun in Westfield Garden State Plaza during an active-shooter incident. No one was injured, and the experience pushed him toward advocacy and community work. He now supports Staten Island&#8217;s LGBTQ+ community through volunteerism, fundraising, and civic roles. Kahmann says visibility matters every day, not just during June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Edward Kahmann says facing tragedy changed how he sees life and personal safety. As a child, he witnessed&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[101003,9,24,63,22311,101004,134,136,135,101002],"class_list":["post-259575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-edward-kahmann","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-pacsun","tag-personal-safety","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news","tag-westfield-garden-state-plaza"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}