My wife and I were at home. It was the middle of the night, the first year we were married, and we were asleep in our apartment in the downtown area o...
Pretty quick into the George Floyd thing I learned that a first responder— a paramedic like me— stood there and filmed the entire interaction. Her iPh...
I didn’t think a whole lot about having PTSD until my wife started telling me stories about things I did at night while I was asleep.
- Â She told me ...
I got out of the service and got my law degree. I didn’t serve long— just enough to pay for school. Because of that, though, and because my family is ...
I was a nurse back in 2020– during the pandemic.
At first, I was scared and overwhelmed about an unknown virus coming from China. Nobody knew anythin...
We received a call to a house fire. Shortly after arriving, we heard there was a strong likelihood someone might still be inside.
“He’s probably in t...
I’m a paramedic. I’ve been called to numerous homes when an elderly patient suffers a heart attack or seems to be having a stroke. I always do the bes...
I received a 9-1-1 call that caught me off guard— in a way none of the others ever had.
It was a co-worker’s family calling. His brother-in-law was o...
I was at my daughter’s college graduation. It was a 2-year community college— the kind where they do a lot of vocational training.
I found myself spe...
It was Christmas Day, a few years into being a firefighter.
I had some seniority at the station, so I wasn’t scheduled to work that day. But, I had a...
I joined the State Highway Patrol while I was in my mid-twenties. Real fast, I picked up special code words and nicknames the guys had for various sit...
I got called on a “domestic.” We jumped into the ambulance and headed that way.
It was rural— about 30 minutes outside town. That meant two things…
...
