In January of 1981, Mary Granger was among 15 Lakeside community members gathered at the schoolhouse to take part in an American Red Cross Advanced First Aid course. Granger was 31 and an elementary school teacher with no medical background, but she was eager to help her neighbors in need.

This was the beginning of the Lakeside Quick Response Unit, an organization formed by a group of Lakeside locals who realized there was an unmet need in their community. Granger, buoyed by the excitement the group carried, joined on something of a lark. She had no idea that the organization would come to define the next four decades of her life, or the impact she would have on emergency medical services in the Flathead Valley.  

Now, after a 45-year career as a volunteer, witnessing every major milestone of the organization, Granger is retiring from the Lakeside Quick Response Unit. The group is holding a retirement party this weekend to honor the contributions Granger has made to the community. It will take place on Sunday, Nov. 15, from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Lakeside QRU building located at 201 Bills Road.  

"It was a very scary thing," Granger said of her decision to join the quick response unit. "But there's just something about knowing you were there in a person's dire need that's very motivating. Initially I did it just to be part of the group, but then I stayed because I felt it was necessary." 

On July 1, 1981, with a crew of freshly trained volunteers, the quick response unit responded to its first call. In those days, Lakeside didn't have any other local emergency medical services. In the event of a health emergency, residents had to wait for an ambulance to drive from Kalispell, valuable minutes that could mean the difference between life or death. 

Now, the quick response team was able to fill in some of the gaps. The team was composed entirely of volunteers, and they were equipped with only basic life support skills. When she responded to a call, which could come at any hour of the day, Granger's job was primarily to sustain life until more advanced help could arrive.  

It was a huge leap forward for Lakeside, but the group was eager to level up the services they were able to provide. Two years after she took the first aid course, Granger decided to commit herself more fully to the quick response unit. She took a year off from her job teaching elementary school in Kalispell to take an emergency medical technician course with her friend Connie Stein.  

With this certification, Granger would be able to provide life-saving care to people while they were being transported to the hospital, another step up for the Lakeside volunteer. At the time, the course Granger took at Flathead Valley Community College was informal. With her background in teaching, Granger was tapped to take over teaching the course, which she and Stein did for the next decade until the college hired professional instructors.

During her tenure, the program graduated 25 or more students each year. Granger was training the next generation of first responders.  

"I helped young people who didn't really know what they wanted to do. They took the class and I mentored them through the process, helped them get trained and get experience in the field," Granger said. "I've had students go on to become paramedics themselves, and some have gone on to be doctors and neurosurgeons, and all of that has been very rewarding." 

In 2004, Granger retired from teaching (her primary profession), which freed up significant time to focus on the Lakeside Quick Response Unit (her volunteer profession). As Granger remembers it, that year Kalispell was being overrun by emergency calls from the rural parts of the county. Whitefish and Columbia Falls had their own services, but the unincorporated communities scattered throughout the valley had to make do with volunteers and relied on Kalispell to fill in the gaps.  

That year, the Lakeside Quick Response Unit purchased its own ambulance. With volunteers like Granger who were certified emergency medical technicians, the organization was able to handle basic life support calls and transport patients themselves, easing some of the burden on Kalispell. 

The quick response unit continued that way until 2010, when the organization recruited its first paramedic. Inspired to continue helping her community, Granger decided at age 61 to pursue her own paramedic training. Over the course of two years, she attained that certification. 

At the same time, Flathead County's emergency medical services system was evolving and becoming more coordinated. Voters passed a levy to support the system. Granger's friend Kim Potter, who had taught that first advanced first aid class she had taken almost three decades earlier, was still involved, and Granger was asked to be a temporary emergency medical services manager. It was something she didn't think she could ever do, but six years later, she finally stepped away from that temporary position.   

During her time with the county, Granger worked to develop a coordinated system that directed ambulances and quick response units, which had until that point been operating independently. Centralizing their work and developing county-wide protocols helped eliminate many of the gaps in rural areas, so that everyone provided the same level of care and services.  

"We're pretty proud of the that Lakeside played in getting that system together," Granger said, quick to add that it was a group effort. "I was instrumental in putting some of it together, but I never did it alone. I always had people that were there to help, and that was one of the things about working with a quick response unit. I'm just one of the many people that through those 45 years have volunteered their time and answered the calls for help in the community." 

And those calls could come at any time, as Granger learned, often during Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner, but her family was always supportive even as her work took her away from them. At one point, her father and brother were also volunteering for the quick response unit.  

One call that stands out in her memory was from early in her career, on July 4, 1987. The country-western band Montana had just finished playing a show in Lakeside and boarded a twin-engine plane bound for Idaho. Instead, the plane crashed into an apple orchard in the hills above Lakeside. 

Granger was one of the volunteers to respond to that call. None of the 10 people on board survived, and decades later Granger is unable to forget a day that encapsulated how challenging it can be to be the first to respond to an emergency.  

But there are happier memories, too. Granger never got tired of seeing friends and neighbors on the street, weeks after she had helped them through a crisis, knowing she made a difference in the midst of their hardest moments. As she enters retirement, she'll miss that, but she knows it's time for her to step back.  

"I'll miss being able to answer the call," Granger said. "But I understand that there are people younger than myself who can do this job as well as I can, if not better, and it's time to turn over the reins and let them fly." 

Reporter Elsa Ericksen can be reached at 406-758-4459 or [email protected]. If you value local journalism, pledge your support at dailyinterlake.com/support.

    Mary Granger and Bill Brass are reflected in a car-door mirror while viewing the Deep Draw Fire from the shoulder of Montana 28 near Elmo in this 2008 file photo. (Garrett Cheen/Daily Inter Lake FILE)