Rescue Squad

The first time Roger Wood met Betty Hindman last April, he wrapped her in a big hug. The first time Hindman met Wood, one week earlier, she saved his life.

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Acts of Kindness , Oklahoma

The 70-year-old volunteer EMT for the 10-33 Emergency Team in Nowata, Okla., answered the 911 call when Wood, 49, had a heart attack and collapsed at work.

"He was in cardiac arrest," says Hindman, who rushed two blocks to Hayes Air Conditioning & Heating in an ambulance with a defibrillator. "I shocked him one time and brought him back. I reached up to do a pulse check and felt him swallow."

Wood couldn’t wait to visit the town’s rescuers the week after heart surgery to thank them and to make a donation to the all-volunteer squad.

Ambulance service in the town of 3,971 is free and runs entirely on donations and dedication. Housed in a no-frills 75-year-old former service station garage, the volunteer crew provides around-the-clock emergency service across 588 square miles in Nowata County. Behind the dispatcher’s desk hangs a plaque—"It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice"—which pretty much describes what makes the town and its ambulance service tick.

"When people get their Social Security check every month, they’ll donate $5, just like they’re paying their utilities," says Bill Carey, 71, a volunteer first-responder. "We’ve got churches in town with only 20 members, yet every month they’ll donate $10 or $20."

Faithful supporters Don and Viola Reynolds send $10 each month. Viola, 83, needed the ambulance six years ago when she broke her hip.

"I can’t imagine what we’d do without it. It’s essential," she says. "They’re a dedicated bunch of workers."

In small towns across America, calls to 911 most likely are answered by volunteers, who make up the majority of the nation’s 600,000 EMTs, according to the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians (NAEMT).

The first rescue squad

Historically, rescuers have been volunteers. Julian Stanley Wise founded the nation’s first rescue squad, the Roanoke Life Saving and First Aid Crew, in 1928 in Roanoke, Va., after witnessing an unforgettable tragedy as a child. At age 9, Wise watched helplessly alongside adults as two men in a homemade boat drowned on the flooded Roanoke River.

"He was haunted by that accident and went home that day and told his parents he would start a rescue movement," says Sue Taylor, director of To the Rescue Museum in Roanoke. Wise traveled across the country organizing community-based rescue squads, the forerunners of today’s EMS system.

"I think EMTs are born into this profession," Taylor says. "They’re the most humble people on earth."

EMT Liz Griner, 33, is devoted to her community. She works as a paid EMT daytimes for Craig General Hospital in Vinita, Okla. (pop. 6,472), then spends nights volunteering for the 10-33 Emergency Team in nearby Nowata. Her husband, Wesley, also volunteers, and when they pull night duty together, they pack up their three young daughters and the whole family sleeps at the station. Allie, 9, and Delann, 13, already know CPR.

"I do enjoy helping people," Liz says. "As a kid, my dad and brother both drove ambulances and I was a first-responder."

A desire to help ease the suffering of their neighbors prompted Richard and Betty Eden and fellow members of a CB radio club to found the ambulance service in 1976. "We had a motorcycle accident here and it took a Bartlesville ambulance 35 minutes to get here," recalls Richard, 76, who still works as a first-responder. In Oklahoma, first-responders need 40 hours training for state certification, and higher-skilled EMTs need a minimum of 120 hours.

The CB’ers converted a Chevy van into an ambulance, and the town has kept the service rolling ever since. Annual expenses of $60,000 are paid in large donations from local businesses and industries and smaller contributions from residents who turn out to support fund-raisers such as pie suppers, chicken dinners and country-music jubilees. Volunteers also stitch quilts and dolls to raffle and residents make memorial donations.

Still, Hindman worries, the 20 active volunteer rescuers are getting older, and there aren’t enough young ones to fill the ranks. Two dispatchers, Nell Hathcoat and Bimi Hicks, are 80.

It’s not for lack of compassion that ranks are dwindling, but for lack of time for duty and training, Hindman says. Rescuers make 700 emergency runs a year to the town’s Jane Phillips Nowata Health Center and to trauma hospitals in nearby Bartlesville, Vinita and Tulsa, up to 50 miles away.

Life-saving satisfaction

The Blacksburg Rescue Squad, a free ambulance that started in 1950 in Blacksburg, Va. (pop. 39,573), relies heavily on college students for its 100 volunteers.

Carl Kennedy, 21, a biology major at Virginia Tech, began doing rescue work when he was 15 and living in Fairport, N.Y. (pop. 5,740).

"The real thing that got me started is I passed by the Perinton (N.Y.) ambulance when I was a kid and kept wondering about it, and one day I just went in," Kennedy recalls. "They gave me a great tour and I got interested."

Another young volunteer, Chris Rourke, 28, works as a paid EMT for Carilion Hospital in Pearisburg, Va. (pop. 2,729), and an unpaid EMT for Blacksburg. He recalls his first life-saving call six years ago when he helped a patient who was having a seizure.

"I remember the excitement of being on the inside of an ambulance, instead of on the outside watching and wondering where it was going," Rourke says. "It’s rewarding. I enjoy it more as a volunteer than when I get a paycheck. But with both, at the end of the day, you have the feeling that you’ve helped people."

Among the rescuers at Blacksburg are four father-daughter teams, including Nicole Hodge, 20, and Rickey Hodge, 43. Nicole, who plans a career as an advanced EMT-cardiac technician, says that her dad encouraged her to volunteer two years ago because he wanted to keep tabs on her. Now, she completely understands and shares the satisfaction that her father feels from serving.

"I don’t look at this as work for no pay. It’s helping somebody," Nicole says. "I’ve had friends look at the blood on my shirt and jeans and say, ‘That’s gross.’ I say, ‘No. That’s saving somebody’s life.’"

In Browns Valley, Minn. (pop. 690), a squad of six staffs the Browns Valley Ambulance Service, which provides emergency transport for 900 square miles near the South Dakota state line. Two volunteers, Linda Schwagel, 51, and Candy Duffield, 50, have been good friends since they were teenagers, and they also work together as city clerk and deputy city clerk.

"There have been times when we’ve had to lock the door," says Schwagel, "and I’ve driven the ambulance in a skirt, nylons and heels."

In a small town, the emotional burden is heightened because the lifesavers often know their victims or patients, Duffield adds. "We’ve hauled our grandkids, our kids, our friends," she says. "I had to take my grandpa, who had congestive heart failure, from the nursing home to the hospital, and an hour later he died."

Before the ambulance service began in 1974, the town relied on the local funeral home to transport patients. "It was a load and go," Schwagel says. "People had no training. They used an old hearse, and they’d go to the accident scene and do what they could do."

Duffield, who then worked as a nurse, was among 20 volunteers when the first EMT training course was offered at Browns Valley High School, and Schwagel followed two years later. Many of their 150 runs each year involve snowmobile and boating accidents and injuries. The EMTs receive $1 an hour when they’re on call and work 350 to 400 hours a month each. They juggle vacations and family outings so that the ambulance is always staffed.

"We could use EMTs big-time," Schwagel says. "We have 17,500 hours a year to be covered and you divide that by six."

When asked why she volunteers, Schwagel doesn’t hesitate: "Somebody’s got to do it."

Browns Valley Ambulance Service received the Emergency Medical Service of the Year Award in 2003 from the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians. Four of the crew attended the awards ceremony in Las Vegas, including EMTs Rose Roark and Sandy Biel. The other two EMTs, brothers Jeff and Jay Backer, would have liked to have attended, Schwagel says.

"They stayed behind to cover our town," she says.

Marti Attoun is a frequent American Profile contributor.

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