LOUISVILLE, Ky. — They are the lifeline for families in our community. This week, we're recognizing the tireless efforts of our EMS workers. For two men, their dedication to the job keeps bringing them back - no matter how hard it gets.
"We stay busy pretty much 24 hours a day. It could go from zero to 100 miles an hour really quick," Andrew Odom, the charge nurse for University Hospital's Emergency Room, said.
As a level-one trauma center, University Hospital's ER is flooded with EMTs and paramedics daily. With 150 to 200 patients coming in a day, no call is ever the same.
"They are the front line of the frontline, including transporting patients in a small box and the higher risk of transmission," Odom said. "They’re really putting themselves out there to protect the community."
"In the field, you go into situations that can be very unstable and can be unsafe," Dr. Tim Price, a professor of emergency medicine and attending physician in UofL's ER, said. "They literally put themselves in harm’s way each and every day. Here lately, a lot of violence, gunshot wounds, car wrecks."
It’s nothing I could do. I’m good inside the building and I admire what they do," Odom said.
If the ER is busy, Joe Hamilton, a paramedic, and Jason Rivera, an EMT with Buechel Fire-EMS likely are, too. To say they are partners is an understatement.
"We’re like brothers," Hamilton said.
They’ve sat side by side for the better part of two decades, in a career that’s spanned nearly 30 years for both, in and around Bullitt and Jefferson counties.
"We’re pretty much ride or die," Rivera said.
Despite their long careers, neither had plans to stay in the field this long. Hamilton started with Jefferson County EMS while he was studying to be a doctor. While he wanted the position for job experience, it gave him much more than he expected.
"After my first run, I was hooked and felt I could do more good. Left college and started this full-time," he said.
Rivera became a volunteer for Buechel Fire back in 1993, before joining Jefferson County's EMS team. He and Hamilton formed a partnership a few years later.
"I wouldn’t be the EMT I am today if I hadn’t been riding with him," Rivera said about Hamilton.
Both men said people don't often understand the intensity and importance of their job.
"People think we just take people to the hospital. We do a lot more than that. We’re not a taxi," Rivera said. "Nine times out of ten they’re standing up working on a patient, having to intubate, going 70 mph. It can be stressful."
"I think people don’t realize the danger we see every day," Hamilton said. He recounted a story of how he once pulled someone out of a car that had flipped upside down as it was filling with water and gasoline.
"We pulled him out and about five minutes after that, the car was fully involved in fire. It hit home with me that I was in the middle of that, trying to save somebody but that's all I was focused on, trying to get him out of there."
In the thousands of runs they make a year, both Hamilton and Rivera mentioned one they would never forget.
"Dixie and Greenwood, we got knocked out on a cardiac arrest. Performed CPR. Got her to the hospital. She walked out of the hospital 3 weeks later." Rivera said.
"They came up to us a year later at a gas station and we were crying and hugged it out. It was just good to see you made a difference," Hamilton said.
"We’ve made so many runs over the years but that one sticks out in my mind the most. Like, I did my job. I did it right. This person lived to see her family," Rivera said.
"This was where I was meant to be. I know it in my heart and working with him, we’ve gotten to the point, where we don’t like working without each other."
Like any close relationship, they have their moments. For a time, Hamilton was Rivera's supervisor.
"I took a couple of chewings from him before," Rivera said. "But you grow from that too, because it’s your buddy and it kinda breaks your heart because it’s your buddy."
"We had one not too long ago. We had a rider with us and scared the Jesus out of him," Rivera laughed. "But we got back in the truck and we hugged it out and we went on with the rest of the day."
Hamilton and Rivera retired from Buechel Fire-EMS years ago, but it didn’t last long. They both came back in 2018 to coordinate the department's EMS division, and continue riding as partners today.
Contact reporter Brooke Hasch at bhasch@whas11.com. Follow her on Twitter (@WHAS11Hasch) and Facebook.
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