Find Your Passion Volunteering - Open the Doors to a New Chapter in Life

Over the course of two years, I went on nearly 200 different 911 calls, and this was the experience of a lifetime. I would be on call every day from the minute school got out until 6 am the next morning. My family was very supportive in my choice to do this, and I received a lot of encouragement. I ended up being pictured in the local newspaper several times for responding to a variety of different car accidents or other things.

One of the calls that really stands out in my mind is a time that I was driving home from school. I would always carry a pager with me in my car, and the pager went off just before I got home. Immediately when the pager went off, in my head I knew exactly what had happened before the sheriff's department even relayed the message. Right away, I somehow new that a girl, who we will call Marsha, was involved in a car accident, and it was not going to be good. Of course they don't mention names when the page goes off, although the page was something along the lines of "You are needed to respond to a two vehicle 10-50 (car accident) rollover, with PI (persons injured)."

I hurried as quickly, but safely as possible to the ambulance base and we were off to the scene. When I arrived, there were people all around the scene, and the police quickly got the area secured, and we began to extricate the girl from the vehicle. She was in a lot of pain, and had numerous broken bones. Her foot had been crushed and twisted and turned within the vehicle, but she was incredibly happy to see me there, which I assume is just because she had previously known me. We successfully extricated the girl from the vehicle, and then began our long ride to the hospital. Because the roads were all blocked off, we had to take a slightly longer way that we would have hoped for to get to the hospital. After we arrived at the hospital, it was only about 15 minutes before a helicopter had arrived to take the girl to Regions Hospital in the Twin Cities.

The helipad at this hospital was actually about a minute away at the time, so we had to transport her there. When we arrived at the helicopter, the girl had already been holding my hand tightly for about the last 30 minutes, and she wanted me to go in the helicopter with her, but that was not going to be possible. I went as far as loading her into the chopper, and then she was off. It was very difficult for me to let her go like that, but there was nothing else that I could do. This individual experience changed me forever, and I am so glad that I could be a part of it.