Pulling people out of burning buildings is a family tradition in the Cercos household.

Grandpa got an award for doing it. Dad got one, too. And now San Francisco Fire Department Battalion Chief Frank Cercos is getting the very same award — Firefighter of the Year for Valor.

“Helping people is what we’re here to do,” Cercos said. “You can never run away from your name.”

Cercos, a 25-year veteran, is getting his citation for what happened some months ago when a pile of oily rags caused a fire to break out in an apartment building at Polk and Jackson streets and a woman in her 70s was trapped on a third-floor balcony.

Cercos and two other firefighters — Josh Edelman and Lt. Ron Rosser — fought their way into the building, up smoky stairwells, down smoky corridors until they got to the woman’s front door. They broke it down, ducked under flames and made their way through a sliding glass door and onto the balcony.

The fire swelled, trapping all four on the tiny balcony and preventing their retreat into the apartment. Firefighters on the street raised a ladder, and the three firefighters managed to maneuver the woman onto it.

“She didn’t want to go down the ladder,” Cercos said. “She was in her bathrobe. But there really wasn’t any alternative. Jumping was not an option. We were in a pickle. I was nervous, sure. But I knew my fellow firefighters would get that ladder up to us in time.”

Around the Cercos household, the plaques go up on the wall and don’t get talked about much. Cercos’ father, Frank Cercos III, got his for rescuing two adults and a child from a burning residential hotel in the Mission District in 1988. And his grandfather, Frank Cercos Jr., got his for pulling a woman to safety in the Fillmore district in the 1970s.

Cercos asked his father and grandfather about their awards, and each of them, he recalled, said the same thing:

“I can’t remember. I been in a lot of fires, kid.”

Frank Cercos III, who is 72 and retired, will be at the award ceremony on Nov. 21 to watch the family baton get passed, and to see Edelman and Rosser receive the commendation — presented by local American Legion Post 456 — as well. Grandpa, who died in 2010, will be there in spirit.

Rescuing people from third-floor balconies, Cercos said, is only slightly more scary than what occurred years ago when he was a probationary firefighter and happened to be training under the supervision of his father, then a division chief.

While firefighters were mopping up a blaze in Hayes Valley, the young Cercos made the mistake of removing his helmet and coat. Veteran firefighters sometimes do that after a fire is out, but probationary firefighters don’t, or shouldn’t — especially when their old man, the division chief, is watching.

“And then I made another mistake,” Cercos said. “I questioned him about it. I asked him if he was really sure I had to wear them.”

Words were exchanged, not as heated as what trapped Cercos on the Polk Street balcony, but close.

“I provided my father with the opportunity to show everyone that he wasn’t going to treat me any differently from anyone else,” Cercos said, laughing. “His words to me were exceptionally clearly stated.”

Cercos quickly put his helmet and coat on. He left them on for the next three decades.

And just maybe, Cercos said, there could be a fourth generation in the family trade. His 9-year-old son, Tommy, knows very well what his forebears have done for a living and, as a tyke, did his share of playing with fire trucks.

“We’ll see,” Cercos said. “That’s entirely up to him.”

The life of a firefighter hasn’t changed much through the generations. At the firehouse, there is a common room where the television is always on, a pot of chili is on the stove and bags of cookies sit on the counter. The other morning at the fire station at California and Laguna streets, Cercos answered a reporter’s questions while a Rocky movie played on the television. Nobody seemed to know which Rocky movie it was, but it had Roman numerals in the title, like the ones that come after the name of Cercos on San Francisco firefighters rosters.

When nothing is going on, firehouses are quiet places. It was dead still in the station house at 4:05 p.m., so quiet you could hear the ventilator whir.

At 4:06 p.m. it wasn’t quiet anymore. An alarm horn went off. In seconds, the men were on the truck.

“We’ll have to finish talking later,” Cercos said.

And a few seconds later, Cercos was gone, to answer a call on the Polk Street sidewalk, where a man was seen lighting a trash fire. It was quickly extinguished.

The San Francisco Firefighter of the Year for 2019 was wearing his helmet and coat.

Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com