By Dylan Scott
The Columbus Dispatch
SUNBURY, Ohio — As the rest of his crew speeds off on a call from Delaware EMS Station 2, Capt. Hugh Dick rocks back in a suede recliner, reflecting on nearly 30 years as a paramedic.
For most of the past three decades, Dick would have been on the squad, too. But with his promotion to captain eight years ago, Dick is forced to sit out on the action.
Like a true veteran, though, he yearns for the chase.
“That’s one of the best perks of the job,” Dick said about what it felt like to save a life. “You try to make that difference every time.”
Dick will step down this week as the department’s longest-serving member, but his career as a public servant will continue. He plans to continue to volunteer with the Hilliar Township Volunteer Fire Department in Knox County, as he has for 31 years, and teach the EMS course after his retirement.
“You either have it or you don’t,” he said when asked what it took to remain a civil servant for all that time. He’s also been a reserve deputy with the Delaware County sheriff’s office for 10 years and served as mayor of Centerburg in Knox County in the late 1980s.
But it’s been these past eight years, confined largely to the station and desk work, that led the 51-year-old to decide it was time to call it quits.
He said he misses the day-to-day interactions with the public and the opportunity to make a difference in their lives. “I don’t have the hands-on contact with patients anymore,” he said. “I don’t get to see and work with them every day.”
Earlier in his career, however, Dick had more than a few chances to make a difference in people’s lives.
One incident was recounted on television.
The reality show Rescue 911 documented a near-drowning in Westerville on June 16, 1991, that involved a young boy in a swimming pool.
Dick said the 4-year-old child was unsupervised in the pool during a party and began to struggle. By the time Dick and company arrived, the boy was unconscious.
Dick performed CPR on the boy and was able to revive him without any serious long-term consequences.
Another time, in the late 1980s, Dick was on a medical helicopter headed to Zanesville for a patient transfer when he and his crew witnessed an accident on I-70 involving a tractor-trailer and a small car carrying two young women. Rather than continue to the less-serious call in Zanesville, Dick had the pilot set down at the accident site.
One woman was dead, but the other survived serious injuries, likely because of the quick response.
Chief Rob Farmer, Dick’s boss for the past four years and friend for almost 20, said the department will lose an irreplaceable veteran when Dick retires.
“There’s an immeasurable volume of knowledge that he’s taking with him,” Farmer said. Outside of the extraordinary occasions, friends say Dick brought a healthy attitude to the station every day and served as an effective mentor for others, such as his partner of eight years, Alex Caskey.
“You knew he had your back. He taught me so much,” Caskey said. “He wouldn’t let me screw up.”