ROYAL CITY - Sena Snyder overheard her husband Tim being asked to become an EMT years ago. He declined because of a fear of blood.

But Sena thought the task would be interesting. So she signed, and she has been a volunteer with Grant County Fire District No. 10/11 since 1998. 

Snyder is currently one of the EMT-I (Intermediate) crew members on the Royal Slope ambulance. Intermediate level EMTs have more advanced training and can do more and use some drugs to treat patients and also start IVs. They are just below the paramedic level.

Snyder was raised in a very rural area, where it took two hours to get an ambulance.  There was no fire department there, so whatever caught fire burned. 

"I always felt like a medic at heart," she said. "The most good often is just being there for the family members of the patient."

"One memorable success story," she added, "involved helping, as firefighters and EMTs extricated, a patient with a broken neck from a motor vehicle accident.  Things went well as we were later able to watch this member of the community make a complete recovery."

The worst calls were those where emergency personnel did all they could and still not enough could be done to help the patient.

 "Those are the times that all we can do is to hold the hand of the family members." Snyder said.

 Snyder observed that it would be nice if more people understood that the volunteers leave family and work at all hours to respond to a call. That leaves them going to work the morning after with no sleep.

She also observed: "We need more EMTs who speak Spanish and more who can respond during the daytime hours." 

Snyder suggested that retired people consider joining the ambulance. Age really does not matter when someone needs help.

"It's a big payback when someone on the street recognizes me as having been on the ambulance that transported a family member or friend." she said. "That's the only way I have of hearing how the patient recovered.

"It's also interesting to meet a police officer I don't know personally, and have them say they recognize me from the ambulance on an accident call."

On the first call that the patient was a close friend of the family,  Snyder was amazed at how calming it was to the patient to have her on the ambulance crew.

"I was so proud when my daughter joined the fire district and became an EMT. This, after the teen-age years, when she said she did not want to be like me. Now she's right beside me on ambulance calls."