Today in bad writing

Yes, he might have. (Then again, you adepts of the Ancient and Mystic Order of the Then-Again Hed will note, he might not have.) But it's a sure bet he wasn't thinking it "when" the wallet was stolen, because he wasn't there. He was trying to pull people out of a building, and he'd left his wallet in his (unlocked) car.

The print version is marginally improved over the online one:

A Dearborn firefighter might have been thinking that no good deed goes unpunished when his wallet was stolen while he was helping with the rescue effort in Wayne last week.

... because the reader isn't left quite as far out to sea as by "the rescue effort in Wayne." But we're still missing the main point. The main justification for writing a second-cycle lede is that there has been a first cycle. This story's new to me. Why not tell it in a way that emphasizes what happened, rather than the writer's facility with cliches?