By SEAN HILLIARD
The Evening Sun (Hanover, Pennsylvania)
Copyright 2006 MediaNews Group, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Andrew Capone credits the example of his father for his decision to become an emergency medical technician.
Capone’s father – also named Andrew – does office work from their Penn Township home.
And that was the last thing 17-year-old Capone wanted to do.
“I’m more of a person who has to do something different every day, or I get bored,” he said.
While being a volunteer with Penn Township Emergency Medical Services suits Capone, this kind of high-stress job may not be for everyone – and Capone has the statistics to prove it.
Out of his class of 30 students, only 18 or 19 made it to the state certification test, and only a handful of them will be able to keep up the high-stress job for life.
The people who didn’t make it through the classes to become EMTs left because of conflicts or finding that the job isn’t for them, Capone said.
One reason that people burn out of the job is because some of the calls are so memorable.
“You always remember your first call, your worst call and your worst-smelling call,” he said.
Two of those calls were the same for Capone. His first call ever was for an elderly woman with chest pains, who lost control of her bladder in the ambulance.
The worst call, he said, was a double fatality earlier this year when a couple was killed.
He wasn’t directly involved with the call, but responded to the scene and can still remember the image of their child sitting in the back of a police car.
Capone’s seeming casualness about these horrific events belies his young age – he’s seen a lot. But he still finds himself being called “Sonny” from time to time.
Capone takes Spanish classes at South Western High School, where he’ll be a senior in August.
“Learning to speak Italian is one of my goals,” he said, “but Spanish is more practical as an EMT going on calls.”
He said his Spanish classes have helped him during calls in the Hispanic community, but he isn’t exactly fluent.
However, he’s still working on the language, which should help him when he settles in the area after college.
Capone wants to go to Penn College of Technology in Williamsport to become a paramedic.
He said the reason he’d like to stay in the area is because of the “new guy” mentality among those in emergency medical services. When you’re the new guy starting out in a different area, it can take a while to get adjusted to how things work, he said.
For now, though, he’s satisfied with being a volunteer EMT in Penn Township, where things are familiar to him.
“It’s not a high-paying job,” he said, “but you do it because you enjoy it.”