By DAVID ROSS
If you feel very ill, Rich Roesch, president of Mercy Ambulance, doesn’t want you to hesitate a minute before dialing 911.
That actually seems to be a problem in Valley Center, where there are a higher incidence of 1144’s (the emergency code for what is popularly known as DOAs) for the number of ambulance calls, compared to other communities. That figure is as high as 20% of the calls.
Mercy Ambulance has been serving the Valley Center, Deer Springs area for about a month now under the auspices of the VC Fire Protection District.
It maintains three ambulances, at Station 73 (across the street from the middle school, on North Lake Wohlford Road), at the Deer Springs Fire Protection District station on Old Castle Road, and at the Santa Ysabel Fire Station.
Each ambulance is staffed by one emergency medical technician (EMT) and one paramedic. The ambulances themselves are what Roesch calls “Hortons, the Cadillac of ambulances.”
Mercy has two brand new ambulances and one that’s 18 months old.
Each of these ambulances carry state-of-the-art equipment, such as Zoll Monitors. This new technology allows medics to monitor the body’s blood pressure, pulse and heart from a single hook-up to a finger.
Almost all of the medics and EMTs serving with Mercy were from the old ambulance service.
“They have a vast experience and knowledge of the area,” says Roesch. “The others that we hired had worked for the Valley Center Fire Dept. as reserves. Our rule is that you can never have two people on the unit that don’t know the area That is a commitment we will make.”
What is an EMT?
Lots of people don’t know the difference between EMTs and paramedics.
Roesch offers a simple definition. “An EMT can do anything outside of the body and a paramedic can do anything inside the body. He can monitor the heart, defibrillate, and inject medicines.
Together the EMT and medic “are a mobile emergency room that can take care of anything,” says Roesch.
People don’t call 911 as often as they should, and sometimes they pay for that mistake with their lives.
Since his ambulance service has been operating here, Roesch noticed the odd phenomenon mentioned at the beginning of this article.
“In the first month, I have seen something highly unusual, a pretty high level of 1144s (a person who is dead). There is a definite problem in this community among people who either don’t know that there’s a paramedic available in ten minutes, or they have that fear of calling that they might get a bill, or be a burden, or the feeling that the symptoms will pass. That is not the approach we want them to take anymore.”
“We don’t pre-qualify”
One reason people might hesitate to pick up the phone and call 911 is that they don’t want to be hit with a huge bill.
“You’d be amazed how little money we end up getting from private parties,” says Roesch. “Over 95 percent comes from government, Medicare, medical or private insurance. There’s a large percentage of people who don’t have insurance, but we take everybody who calls. We don’t pre-qualify people. We’re here to service the community and part of our job is to take care of all residents and visitors, without regard to payment or anything like that.”
Two 911 Stories
Roesch, who has owned an ambulance service for ten years, and has been in the business since 1979, talks about the case of two friends of his to illustrate how important 911 is when you need it.
“A friend of mine started having chest pains when he woke up. he took ten aspirins and he was very damp, sweating profusely. They called 911 and the second our paramedics walked in the door he ‘coded’ that means he died. We hooked up the heart monitor, defibrillated him, took him to the hospital, on the way to the hospital we called for a helicopter because there was no major trauma center near.
“On the way to the hospital he coded again, we defibrillated him again. On the helicopter he coded again, and was brought back.”
The man underwent quadruple bypass surgery. One week later Roesch went to visit him at his house and they had a great conversation. “If he would have waited like some people do, he wouldn’t be with us today.”
That same summer, a woman that Roesch had graduated from high school with, didn’t call 911. Instead she put up with abdominal pain for two weeks.
She finally called, she was loaded into an ambulance, and as they drove she told the medic that the pain was so bad she thought she was going to die.
“That instant her aneurism blew and she bled to death internally. If she would have called when she started she would have lived. She was 45,” recalls Roesch.
“Some people have this terrible idea that they don’t want to be a bother, particularly those living alone. They say to themselves, ‘If I just go to bed tonight I’ll be fine.’ ”
Don’t do that.
Visits are Free
“We want to come to your house. We want to hook you up to the heart monitor to see if there is something wrong with you.
“If if turns out that you don’t need an ambulance, we never charge a person for that and we never will. That is a free service. We want them to call. We’ve never ever charged for getting to the patient’s side and assisting the patient. The reason we encourage you to call is that we want the patient to help us to help them. That’s what we are here for.”
Mercy Ambulance’s staff plans to get out into the community, do as many presentations as they can to educate the public.
“The more presentations I do the more likely people are to love our service, like our people and call 30 percent more often.”
That’s an approach that Mercy has used before. At Mariposa County, where they also operate an ambulance service.
Mercy also operates ambulances in Los Angeles County, Hawthorn, Gardena, Palos Verdes and Redondo Beach.
“Once people KNEW they would get a paramedic if they called, our calls increased 30 percent.”
Mercy also plans to do CPR training for schools and organizations.
They are also available to do standbys for large events who lots of people are expected.
“We like to do standbys,” says Roesch. “Say that someone is having a big event, we like to post our ambulance there. As long as we are not committed, we have no charge for that service.”
If you have concerns or questions about Mercy Ambulance, call 760-525-2688
Recently Daybreak Community Church of Carlsbad, “adopted” the community of Valley Center and its fire survivors.
Nancy Cowie, director of ministry development at Daybreak told The Roadrunner how her church decided to get involved in the inland fire relief efforts.
“This is our California 911. This is an emergency that we feel involves all of Southern California. I think that we in our coastal community feel remote from the fire but we know that if the wind had blown wrong for a couple of days that we could have been in it.”
Shortly after the fire a group of members of the church got together to discuss what they could do for the fire victims.
“I started to make some phone calls and got connected with Donna at Shoemaker Realty and subsequently came to Valley Center for a visit.”
“I met Abe Boulos [one of the board members of the Valley Center Fire Relief Fund] at the deli, and as I met people throughout the day, I was so impressed with the community effort here and the community spirit. I felt there were things that our coastal community could do to come alongside Valley Center to help out.”
Cowie went back to her church family and said to them: “I propose that we adopt this community and do what we can to put our arms around the community and help out.”
Since then Daybreak has held several fund-raisers, among them a cookie exchange that raised $10,000 (you read that amount correctly).
They put together three videos on the fire and presented them to their 900 member congregation and raised another $1,000. The video can be used by any group that wants to talk about the fire to an audience of people unfamiliar with it.
Several of the businesses owned by members of the church have donated a total of $7,000 to the VC Fire Relief Fund.
Her group is also working closely with pastors Bill Trok of Ridgeview Church and John Sale of Valley Center Community Church and their churches’ relief efforts.
Cindy Marcon of the Adopt-A-Family effort here, gave the church 40 families to adopt.
Cowie comments, “I have to compliment your community. They are doing their regular jobs and doing everything else on top of it.
“I felt that our community could learn from this community about that connectedness that you community has. There’s a lot of people reaching out to others. We’re happy to be a part of that. I think we lose that in larger communities. I want to bring them here to get a sense of that.”
Her church is not only committed to helping fire survivors with their immediate needs. They also want to talk to them about their needs in the coming months.
“Our church is a body of people who are just a group of resources. They want to do their part to help out,” says Cowie. “We have a lot of nurses and doctors in our church community. They are exploring he idea of doing a clinic here We have the surgeon who operated on President Reagan when he was shot. We’ve got some great resources.”
She comes to Valley Center every Friday to meet with people, hear about needs, and bring donations.
An example of this: She heard about a young high school student whose college entrance papers burned.
She brought her a new computer and printer, courtesy of the church, to help her recreate the paperwork.
They are in the final stages of working out the donation of a double wide trailer to one of the fire survivor families.
On Jan. 18 Daybreak will host a “family fun and comedy day in Valley Center at Ridgeview Church.”
The day will include a carnival, jumps for the kids, and, at 6 p.m., clean family comedians
“We want to provide all of the workers, food and entertainment and kick off the new year in a light note and invite anyone from the community to come,” says Cowie.
Cowie, who is a designer, is also working with Pastor Bill Trok and the firefighters at Station 72 to possibly design a memorial to the fire survivors and the community on a triangle of land at the fire station.
She has designed a fountain for the memorial and would like to work with area gardeners to create a place of reflection and a plaque.
Deacon Mickey Hurst has begun a six month stint (that could become longer, or possibly permanent) as the pastor of Light of the Valley Lutheran Church’s flock.
He is the interim pastor, taking over from the Rev. Robert J. Stevens, who has moved on to another church. He began his ministry on Dec. 1
“I feel blessed beyond measure to be here,” he said.
Deacons such as Hurst are part of a program where candidates are put through courses over a period of two and a half to three years, followed by an internship in a special area.
However the church has so many vacancies that it is starting to use deacons in some of the smaller churches.
As Hurst explains, “A deacon can do anything a pastor can do as long as its under the supervision of another pastor. He can marry, bury, confirm, etc.”
Hurst, who has lived in this area for many years, grew up in south Illinois and spent many years in Perrysburg, Ohio, before moving to Southern California with his wife of 39 years, Lori.
They have two children, a daughter who is a bilingual teacher in Bakersfield, and a son who is a professional forester in Northern California.
In his previous three churches he has served as minister of outreach and youth and minister of discipleship. This is the beginning of his 18th year in fulltime ministry.
Deacons in the Lutheran church serve in one or more particular ministries in the congregation. These include ministries such as social ministry, youth ministry, stewardship, outreach, visitation, evangelism, and outdoor ministry. What distinguishes the deaconal from the pastoral ministry is the area of responsibility or jurisdiction. Pastors are given the responsibility for the general life of the whole congregation. Pastors may delegate to deacons the responsibility for particular ministries within a congregation.
Deacon Hurst would like to be the permanent pastor at LOV.
“I’ll be with them for six months. They could call me to serve them permanently,” he told The Roadrunner.
The deacon explained what his goals are during his six months here.
“I think the thing we would want above everything is for all of us to grow in our relationship with Christ, in our love for God and for one another and for that love to have a very positive effect out in the community of Valley Center.”
He added, “For our church, being called Light of the Valley, we do want to be a bright light for the community, where people can come and feel fully accepted.
“We always want to be available for everybody. We want to help people to establish an intimate, close personal relationship with the Lord. He has all of the answers that we need. We’d love to see our church reach out, especially to the young people. That’s the future for any church.”
The Valley Roadrunner
P.O.B. 1529, Valley Center, CA 92082
Tel. 760.749.1112 Fax 760.749.1688
Website: www.valleycenter.com
Email: editor@valleycenter.com
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