Dad's Christmas dawn cry will sound out over Bulli for slain paramedic Steven Tougher

He was a reluctant rugby league player - the kid who'd abandon the game in order to check the boy he'd just tackled was OK. He was the one bullied at school. The one determined to become a paramedic - never mind his marks, he'd get there.

As a teen, he negotiated his way into a local nursing traineeship that hadn't existed until he came up with the idea. He once pumped a reveller's heart back into beating life at a party. He was in love. He talked to his mum every day. His baby girl was about to be born and he was overjoyed about that.

Steven once arrived at his parents' Bulli house late at night because he'd seen a dog meet a sad end at work that day. He came specifically so he could hold the family chihuahua close for a while, knowing there would be something reassuring about having Pauly in his hands.

The gentle tapestry of Steven's life was all wrapped up in his paramedic's uniform when it was brutally and confoundingly destroyed in April this year.

Less than a year into his career, the 29-year-old was killed in a frenzied knife attack in the car park of a Campbelltown McDonald's as he finished up the day's paperwork.

All that life, snuffed out for reasons now left to a court to comb over.

As Steven's family prepares to face their first Christmas without him, Steven's dad Jeff Tougher is calling on those who come into contact with frontline workers this festive season to remember that those are people behind the uniforms.

Jeff, who works in public housing complexes doing maintenance and repairs, knows this time of year can fan the the flames of social discontent, fuelled by alcohol, drugs, mental health problems and strained relationships.

None of it is an excuse for violence.

"People say a lot of things on Christmas Day that they don't say the rest of the year," Jeff told the Mercury.

"Just because you had something happen to you, or you've hurt somebody, or because of the arguments that always come on Christmas Day - don't let yourself fire up.

"Walk away from those issues - you know, be the better person.

"I don't believe that an ambo should be bringing a blue baby back to life and looking over their shoulder, seeing who's coming and what's behind them."

Violence against frontline workers - paramedics in particular - has inspired Jeff's ongoing campaign for mandatory sentencing provisions, to be known as Steven's Law.

Violence - the threat of it, the results of it - was something Steven saw on the job well before it killed him.

He once told of attending a public housing estate in the early hours of the morning to help a woman who had experienced a drug overdose.

He described how people came out of their homes and swarmed him and her, "like the zombie apocalypse".

"It was two o'clock in the morning and he's working on her on the footpath," Jeff said.

"People were coming out of the woodwork going, 'get her phone off her, she owes me 40 bucks'.

"Steven said he felt uncomfortable. He ended up having to say, 'can you all stand back, please?"

In another troubling incident, a woman had killed her dog in preparation for her own suicide, only for her to survive the attempt.

Steven tended to the woman with the lifeless hound sitting on the lounge next to her.

"She thought it was all over for her, so she strangled her dog," Jeff said.

"He rang me and said, 'how's Pauly? I'm coming over'."

Jeff saw his son fatigued after a long shift. He would begrudgingly comply when Steven would call and ask him to fill up the family's inflatable spa ahead of his return home (Steven, a newlywed, only moved out of the family home less than a year ago).

"He'd get out of the spa and leave wet towels and underpants and everything all over the place and I'd say, 'for god's sake, clean up your bloody mess!'," Jeff said.

"And he'd go, 'yeah, yeah, yeah,' like every kid does, and then he'd leave and I'd end up cleaning it all up.

"But I don't think I realised how hard he worked during the week. He saw our house as a safe place to just come home and slobber.

"I'd give everything just to run that boy a spa again. I'd give everything for that."

Jeff was uneasy about how the job brought his six-foot-five, soft-hearted son into such regular contact with agitated and unpredictable people.

Himself a former league player with the Thirroul Butchers, he had tried in vain to coach Steven into a love of the game.

He remembered how the crowd on the hill cheered when a 13-year-old Steven took out a player from the opposing team with a textbook, round-the-legs tackle.

"He really cut this kid in half and everyone on the hill went, 'good hit, Steven, good hit!'," Jeff said.

"Two or three tackles later I've gone, 'where's Steven?'. I looked back down and he was helping the kid up.

"Steven was later defending underneath the post when he let the kid run past him and score. He couldn't bring himself to hit the boy again.

"I was furious - I mean furious. I couldn't wait to get him in the sheds at full-time," Jeff said.

"I tore strips of him and he just said, 'I'm sorry, dad'. And we both burst into tears."

"I said, look son, it's not for you'. I quit and he quit and we never played rugby league again.

"He softened me up a lot. But I tried to toughen him up too, and he just wasn't interested.

"He didn't want to know anything about how to fight. I wanted him to just learn how to defend himself. I think he just didn't want to hurt anyone."

The brutality and random nature of Steven's death sparked a public outcry.

His farewell resembled a state funeral, with the Premier and other dignitaries, a helicopter flying overhead and 1500 of NSW Ambulance's most recent recruits standing to salute his coffin.

But the ceremony and posthumous honours have all passed now.

The Toughers are taking in some quiet time as they prepare for next year's court proceedings against Steven's alleged killer, Jordan Fineanganofo, 21.

Steven won't be there to watch Mad Max with his dad this Christmas, like they do every year.

Jeff and Steven's mother Jill are most looking forward to seeing their granddaughter.

The little girl, Lily-Mae Stevie Tougher, was born five weeks after her father died, giving family members the bittersweet experience of seeing some of Steven's features live on.

"She looks at me and I look at her, and it's like I've met her before," Jeff said.

"She wants to touch you, she wants to hold you, and when you hold her, she grabs onto you like she knows you, and it's such a beautiful thing.

"That's where we've got to, kind of, put all our love, to make sure that kid knows who she is."

All their lives, Steven and his sister Jessica were woken at 5am on Christmas morning, to the sounds of a sort-of Santa Claus hollering 'ho, ho, ho, meeeeerry Christmas!' across the valley outside their house.

The call might be a little less robust this year, but it will go on.

"I've been doing it for 40 years - nobody knows it's me," Jeff said.

"This year I'll be doing it pointing to the sky: 'ho, ho, ho, meeeeerry Christmas - my mate, my son!".