By Andrew I. Jones
Eureka Times Standard
EUREKA, Calif. — “I woke up in the ambulance and saw a mask on my face. I saw my wife following the ambulance through the window,” recalled Paul Nicholson. “They said I fell off a cement truck, and then I passed out again.”
Nicholson had fallen from a truck parked in front of his home, hitting his head and blacking out. His wife witnessed the accident and called 911.
The Eureka resident’s life-changing moment wasn’t the day he was whisked from his family with sirens blaring. It came later when talking to his 6-year-old son.
“We talked about how my accident made him feel,” Nicholson said. “He told me he didn’t know what to do in an emergency, and that really impacted me.”
Nicholson had recently seen a 911 call simulator machine at a Red Cross conference related to his work as an insurance agent. He pooled contributions from other agents, purchased one, and then phoned an elementary school principal and asked if he could show her students.
That was eight years ago. Today Nicholson is booked four to five hours each week visiting schools throughout the county on a one-man mission to educate kindergartners, first and second graders about their ability to summon aid in a crisis.
“Kids should have the power and confidence to make the call and save themselves or somebody else,” Nicholson said. “They should feel empowered to take care of themselves if the older person taking care of them cannot do it for them.”
One recent morning Nicholson found himself in Kelly Miller’s first-grade classroom at Morris Elementary Language Immersion School in McKinleyville.
He gave students advice on what to do when calling from a home landline or cell phone and alternate ways to identify their location to the operator if they don’t know it. Students then took turns dialing 911 on a demonstration telephone and speaking to a pre-recorded operator.
“Nine-one-one operator. What is your emergency?” a female voice announced through the handset and to students in the room.
“My mother fell down and she’s not talking,” a child said into the phone. Nicholson sat nearby, activating responses from the emergency operator using a remote control. Encouraging comments were quick at hand when a student paused or didn’t know what to say.
Each student took home a refrigerator magnet for parents to write down their essential contact details so that their child need not fear remembering in the heat of the moment.
“Some kids don’t know where to find the ‘9' on the phone, let alone where they live,” Nicholson said. “I like to show students three years in a row because young children need repetition to learn, especially when it’s something they’ll need to recall only in an emergency,” he said.
Nicholson’s time and expenses are provided on a volunteer basis, with no fee to schools. When asked why he does it, he recalled an experience at his son’s middle school basketball game.
“I saw a little boy running around the court, and I think he’s coming to me, and then he zeros in on me. He says, ‘Aren’t you the 911 guy?’” Nicholson recalled. “And then he says, ‘I told my mom that’s who you were.’ That was amazing. You can’t buy that kind of feeling. Someday I’m going to hear about a kid who has called 911 after learning from me, and that’s why I do it.”
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