By Maddie Seiler
The Sentinel
CUMBERLAND COUNTY, Pa. — It’s no secret that the job of a first responder is anything but easy.
Taking calls can mean long hours, time away from family and PTSD. But every day hundreds of men and women in Cumberland County answer those calls.
Every week, The Sentinel’s Sirens for Service feature will aim to show the faces of these people and share their stories.
The series focuses on why they became a first responder and highlights a specific call from their service that influenced them and reminds them of why they do what they do.
Mary Dutchess
Agency: Cumberland Goodwill EMS
Title: Chaplain
Time with company: 4 years
Q: Why did you become a first responder?
A: I had a daughter who was 46 years old and was killed in a tragic car accident in West Virginia.
During the time that I was grieving, I went to a leadership class at my church, Bethel Assembly of God, under Lead Pastor Chuck Kish who is also the lead chaplain. I took this leadership class and at the end of it there was a gifts test that we had to fill out, and it told us what areas of service our gifts were in from the Holy Spirit.
Mine turned out to have a strong lead toward what I’m doing now as far as being a chaplain, or it even mentioned pastor and I knew that wasn’t for me at my age, so I told Pastor Chuck that I wanted to pursue being an EMS chaplain.
I trained under him for a year, along with one of the other chaplains who is no longer serving, but at the end of the year I started just kind of by the seat of my pants, proverbially speaking.
I’ve been doing it four and a half years and every time I step on the ambulance I think of my daughter. The thing about that was that it haunted me that she died by the side of the road with no one praying for her and holding her hand, and I have prayed for many people and held their hands in the ambulance, so it kind of fulfilled that.
Q: Can you describe a call that has influenced you? What did that call look like and why did it impact you?
A: Oh my, there are so many calls that have impacted me. There was a wreck where I did get to pray with the person, I did get to hold her hand, she did have the same first name as my daughter, and that person eventually died.
So that impacted me. That has not been too long ago, but I think the one that I always think of first is, it was a drug overdose and the person who died was in an apartment with a minor little girl for three days dead until it was discovered that her mother was no longer alive.
I was called out on that, it was a weekend callout, and spent time with the little girl, spent time with the parent of the expired person.
They had to call Children and Youth (Services) in. It was a lot of activity, and I hadn’t been doing this that long when that happened, but that’s the first call that I always think of when someone asks me that question.
(c)2023 The Sentinel (Carlisle, Pa.)
Visit The Sentinel (Carlisle, Pa.) at www.cumberlink.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.