By Sharla Steinman
Loveland Reporter-Herald
The Emergency Medical Services Association of Colorado will present Thompson Valley EMS Chief James Robinson with the State Executive of the Year Award on Saturday.
“Chief James Robinson is the rare leader who can steady the wheel in a storm and still build a better ship,” wrote Jennifer Hillmann, Thompson Valley EMS executive director of communications, in her nomination letter.
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Robinson said he was humbled to find out he had been selected.
“I’m not a big individual award guy,” Robinson said with a blushing smile. “This is a team sport, and this (award) is really a reflection of the team we have.”
Thompson Valley EMS serves 450 square miles of Larimer County and has multiple facilities in Loveland. Robinson has served as chief since 2022.
While Robinson was bashful when asked why he thought he was selected, Hillmann said that he has turned TVEMS into an agency for others to “emulate.”
“He’s the one that’s standing behind, motivating everybody to go forward,” she said. “That’s one of the biggest reasons that we did this and it was a team effort on the nomination.”
Robinson said he’s most proud of identifying values the whole team is in support of: teamwork, integrity, service and passion.
“It wasn’t one of those sort of performative exercises where you just tell people what the values are,” Robinson said. “They bubbled up from the people doing the work every day.”
The statewide award comes after a decades-long career in emergency medical services for Robinson.
A friend asked him to take an EMT class while he was taking a hiatus from college to save money, he said. His friend dropped the course, but it “started everything” for Robinson, who quickly became a volunteer in Broomfield before going to paramedic school, launching his 26-year career working for the Denver Health Paramedic Division. He retired in 2019 to take a private sector job, but he realized he wanted to go back to being a public servant, hence his return to TVEMS.
Robinson would describe his career as “interesting”; he has delivered 13 babies in the wild, met multiple presidents, and even drank out of the Stanley Cup at a Colorado Avalanche team party celebrating their 2001 win. (He has the photo to prove it.)
He said he is looking forward to continuing to better care in the community as it expands, improving the pathway for people to have a career in emergency medical services, and navigating how a main hospital closure will impact Loveland.
“(We’re) continuing to invest in and grow our people because they’re the ones taking care of our patients everyday and are out in the field and doing the work,” Robinson said.
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