By Aaron Collins

Jerry Starkey was on the job when he received the kind of word that chills the blood of any parent: His son, while riding his bicycle, had been hit by a car. The bad news grew more nerve-wracking when he was not informed of his boy’s condition, only told that a crew was en route to relieve him from duty.

“Of course I thought the worst,” Starkey says. Thing is, he had seen it all—from the merely bad, to the unspeakably bad. He’s a paramedic.

When he was notified about his son, he was in the middle of loading a patient—who was in serious respiratory distress—into an ambulance for stat transport. His son’s mishap had occurred within Starkey’s service area. But the paramedic’s dilemma may have been much easier for him to handle than a father’s torment—he was required to stay with the patient without knowing his son’s fate. These are the tough calls that professionals must be prepared to make.

“I knew I needed to trust the other crews and deal with my patient now. We began transport and just before I arrived at the hospital I received another page that my son only had a broken leg and was doing fine. At that point my patient was improving and as we turned the corner into the emergency department, I lost it. It took me a couple of seconds to get my head back into the game,” Starkey recalls.

His ability to function under pressure and in these kinds of complex circumstances illustrates his perfect fit for the job. “I enjoy pressure. I looked forward to the more difficult calls that took more thought and skills to work on my patient,” Starkey says, adding, “I relish the idea of running a mass causality event. Not that I want people injured, but if they are going to do it, do it on my shift and in my zone.”

That temperament and depth of experience also make Starkey especially qualified to teach the difficult aspects to those entering a profession that is fraught with them. What to do after a automobile pile-up when a father is standing over his beloved child who is gravely injured and, medically speaking, beyond hope, while others injured stand a chance at survival? Starkey once had to make that tough call, too, which he describes as one of the most harrowing moments in his career. Managing the human emotions of the father while tending to those in dire but survivable condition posed one of the greatest challenges that he has faced.

Being a father himself certainly means he brings that role to the table whenever parents and children are involved. “We see the best and the worst of society. We have to understand that we do not put our patients into those positions they find themselves in. However, we are there to give them the last best chance of a positive outcome,” he observes.

But as with any work, there are rewarding moments, too, says Starkey, who grew up an Army brat and traveled all over the world with his father, a career NCO combat medic. Starkey now teaches combat medic skills training for the Army National Guard. “As an instructor, seeing the light come on in a student’s facial expression when they finally figure out a problem on their own” ranks among his favorite occurrences.

In addition to offsetting his profession’s high stress with the dark humor common to his coworkers, Starkey unwinds with family and friends over dinner and canasta. He also can be found at the firing range knocking down steel targets at 500 meters. “My wife calls it ‘recoil therapy,’” Starkey jokes. The couple has two sons.

He met his wife of 33 years while studying nursing, when he also took an EMT course. He needed a job and was told by the head nurse in an area ED that he might be best cut out for ambulance work, and got a job with Martin’s Ambulance Service in Madera. The rest is history. He joined the profession “not by planning. I fell into it by accident,” he says.

But a lot of his inclination toward the career was formed not only by his father’s work, but by his early involvement in scouting. “I received my best education from scouting, including first aid and leadership,” he says, adding, “I have two brothers and one sister and I am the oldest. And as such, I had to learn how to be strong and fair in dealing with my siblings.” These interpersonal skills are helpful in his line of work. Also, he was attracted by the “constant change day to day and not being stuck in a building.”

Having spent so many years in ambulance work, Starkey, 53, knows the myths and inside scoop. Among the myths he debunks are the public’s misconceptions, which include the belief that more bedlam arises on a full moon. Not so, says Starkey, who lives in the Sierra foothills outside Fresno. He says, “There is no rhyme or reason to the pattern that patients are presented.” No threes, no types of incidents, it’s just random. He says one of the bigger misconceptions of the general public is that coming into the ED by ambulance gets you seen any faster. And that paramedics and EMTs do not make nearly as much money as the public believes they do, he says. “Also, the public (and some paramedics) often believe that we should never ever cry,” Not true either, Starkey says. “There is a time and a place.”

Does he have any advice for those eager to enter paramedic work? “Don’t allow Hollywood to pull the wool over your eyes,” says Starkey. “Things are never like they are on TV or in the movies. But if you decide to get in this business, you need to realize it is not all black and white. This career field is filled with medical ambiguity. You need to develop the skill that we call critical thinking, for the patient’s body does not read the textbook and doesn’t have to follow it,” offers the veteran paramedic. “With that in mind, this job is a blast.”

How does he want to be remembered? “As someone who was hard but fair in enforcing the rules so that all patients receive competent care and everyone got to go home at the end of their shift.”

But after three decades, while retirement may not be imminent, Starkey envisions the end as perhaps not an end at all: “When I get an admit to the eternal care facility, I truly cannot see myself not doing something involving EMS.” Even the end he sees isn’t black and white, just another scene filled with shades of gray.

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