By Jim Carney
The Akron Beacon Journal, Ohio
HUDSON, Ohio — When Edward Nowak heard the call on his emergency scanner on New Year’s Eve, he bolted into action.
Maureen Stone, a neighbor, was having a heart attack down the street.
As a volunteer member of the city’s Emergency Medical Service, Nowak, 65, a chemist by day, flew out the door — still wearing his slippers through the snow — to get to the stricken woman.
Nowak was part of the team that helped revive her, and the department’s response to that call led to its receiving the EMS Star of Life Award for the region from the Ohio Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians.
The award-winning Hudson EMS is not only the lone EMS-only department in Summit County, but also the lone EMS department that uses unpaid volunteers.
Nowak and nearly 60 others put in an average of 12 hours a week going out on emergency calls in the city of more than 23,000.
The department consists of three full-time and 11 part-time employees and 57 volunteers, said Bruce Graham, EMS director.
The department also provides free basic EMS training to its volunteers in exchange for two years of service. The three-month 120- to 130-hour courses costs $730 for others.
On top of that, the department will pay for members of EMS to get EMT-intermediate training, at about $1,000, and for paramedic training, a course that costs about $4,200.
Again, In exchange, members must give the department two years of volunteer service.
The beauty of relying so heavily on volunteers, Graham said, is that “there is no burnout.”
He said the volunteers “don’t mind getting up at 3 a.m. for the 83-year-old woman who has been having indigestion since 3 that afternoon.”
The experience is “exciting and it’s new every day,” he said.
Hudson EMS responds to about 1,500 calls a year, or about four a day, Graham said.
With the use of so many unpaid volunteers, Graham said, the department can “put money back into equipment.”
The volunteers range in age from 19 to 75.
The department is funded through income tax revenue and money collected from transportation charges, generally paid by insurance. The budget is about $1.2 million a year.
The Stone call
Stone was on the phone, setting up plans for a celebration, when she collapsed on New Year’s Day.
Her daughter, Karissa, then 16 and a lifeguard with CPR training, called 911 and began to perform CPR on her mother.
She said she remained on the phone with 911 dispatcher Jo Ann Lowman and monitored her mother, who was breathing at first but stopped.
Karissa said that when she was working on her mother, before the squad arrived, “I wanted to make sure I was doing it right. I went into a mode where I knew what I had to do, and I knew I had to do it, and everything else escaped my mind.”
During CPR, she said, she “knew it was my mom and I didn’t want to mess up.”
Hudson police Sgt. Troy Wilcox arrived and took over CPR until the EMS squad arrived, including volunteers Nowak, Stacie Johnson, Lauren Maddox and Dan Fundak and part-time paid EMS workers William Marshall and Stefen Krieger.
Stone, a teacher at Akron’s Buchtel High School, was rushed to Akron City Hospital, where doctors put two stents into her arteries. She was hospitalized for less than two weeks and was back to work several weeks later.
She praised not only her daughter, but also the Hudson police and EMS workers, as well as the medical personnel at Akron City Hospital for saving her life.
Her daughter, who plans to go into nursing, said it is “wonderful” that Hudson has an EMS that uses so many volunteers.
Maddox, 24, of Akron, an EMT with eight months on Hudson’s squad, is in paramedic training at Cuyahoga Community College and works for Akron Children’s Hospital. She wants to become a critical-care flight medic. Hudson is not paying for her paramedic training.
“It is fulfilling and rewarding,” Maddox said of her 12 hours a week on the volunteer job in Hudson.
Volunteer Johnson, 22, of Stow, with 13 months of service, is in paramedic school at St. Thomas Hospital, paid for by Hudson.
“I love taking care of people,” said Johnson, who is looking for paramedic jobs in the South when her commitment to Hudson ends.
She graduates in November and expects to become state certified a few weeks after that. She said she will then owe Hudson two years of service.
Volunteer Nowak said there is something rewarding being part of a life-and-death effort on an EMS squad as a volunteer.
He remembered when he was a student, the first night there was a patient who was not breathing and he started CPR.
The patient was in and out of consciousness several times on the way to the hospital.
Nowak said he watched the whole drama unfold in the hospital and remembers the doctor finally saying that there was a pulse.
“I got choked up,” he said.
That moment, was one of the greatest in his life, he said.
“That is why I do this,” he said.
Copyright 2009 Akron Beacon Journal