Episode 359: The Best of The Bravest: Paramedic Mark Peck (Volume 70)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
You're listening to the bike Did You Even?

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Podcast hosted by media personality and consultant Mike Glow. You're

(01:01):
listening to the Best of the Bravest Interviews with the
Ft and Y's Elite. And now for volume seventy. It's
been a couple of weeks now of straight FT and
Y shows and that's been great. It's been nice to
get back into the Best of the Bravest, which is
one of the backbones, as you know, of this program.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
And welcome back, ladies, gentleman.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
On that note two episode three hundred and fifty nine
of the Mike and New Aven podcast. And what is
a milestone volume for the Best the Bravest Interviews with
the Ft and wys Elite, Because it's volume seventy and
we started this series quite a number of years ago,
almost four with Ray Seely originally and to see it
take a life of its own and like I said,
become one of the true backbones of the program. I
thank all of you, and I thank all of the

(01:45):
guests and Queen Tonight's guests. I'll introduce it a little
bit for the contributions to the mini series over the years.
It does not get anywhere if you don't have an audience,
and best of the bravest as certainly become something very
vital to Mike and New Haven Podcasts for the audience
that it's built, and I appreciate every one of you
for that. Just a quick shout out previously to the
of course episode that preceded this one, which was volume

(02:05):
sixty nine, Chief of Department retire Chief of Department of
the FTNY John Sudnik, and that was a fun conversation
with him. Got a lot of good feedback on that one,
So thank you very much for those of you that
tuned in. If you haven't checked it out, of course,
make sure you do so you know the drill by
Now we're trying to get more sponsors here in the program.
But the one guy I can say is who has
been with us thick and thin, and I appreciate him

(02:25):
because that's a true friend. Right there is Billy Ryan,
retired NYPD detective and head of the Ryan Investigative Group.
The Mike Thing to Haven podcast is proudly sponsored and
supported by the Ryan Investigative Group. If you need an
elite PI, look no further than the elite Ryan Investigative Group,
which is run by retired NYP Detective Bill Ryan, a
twenty year veteran of the department who served a majority

(02:46):
of his career in the detective Bureau, most notably in
the Arson explosion squad. So, if you need a PI
to handle anything from fraud, legal services, and anything else
that you might require, contact Bill at three four seven
four one seven sixteen ten. Again three four seven four
one seven sixteen ten. Reach him at his website or
the email that you see here. Again, if you need
a PI, look no further than Bill Ryan and the

(03:07):
Ryan Investigative, who a proud supporter and sponsor of the
Mike the New Haven Podcast. And just before I introduce
the guests, I do want to send my dole syst Tobilly.
He just lost his mom. So are on behalf of
myself and produc producer Victor and all of us here
at the Mike Diaben Podcast. Those of you of course
in the audience as well, including in this We sent
our love and our thoughts to Billy as he grieves

(03:29):
his mom. So now you know you raised the heck
of a man there, Mama Ryan, and we remember you
on this program. Mother Peck has joined us here in
the Mike the Newaven podcast. I heard that comment in
the promo I put out on Facebook. My next guest
is a retired FTMHI paramedic whose career spans over five
decades of saving lives in the street and as well
as teaching and preserving as we'll talk about tonight, EMS

(03:50):
history from working in the gritty streets of nineteen seventies
New York City as well as eighties and nineties New
York City, to helping build the foundation for today's EMS
training and operation. The story is, I definitely want a dedication, innovation,
and a deep love for the profession. And it's a
profession that gives a lot for as much as it
may take. And we'll talk about that tonight. Not for
this milestone volume seventy of the best of the Bravest

(04:11):
interviews with the ft and wise Elite Mother Peck himself.
Mark Peck finally joins me. We're trying to do this
for a while, Mark, so it's nice to finally happen.

Speaker 3 (04:19):
Yeah, I'm glad the schedules finally worked out. You know,
retirement is hard to schedule around.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
Yeah, yeah, I always go back to something.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
My friend Dan McNally, retired on the NYPD Bomb Squad,
said on this program a number of years ago on
Tails from the Boom Room, our Bomb Squad minise series,
where he was like, retirement's a full time gig.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
It's a hard thing to do, and he's right, he's right.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
From what I've heard, guys are busier in retirement than
they were when they were actually on the job.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
So we'll talk about that tonight as well.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
So before we get into anything, of course, involving your career,
first question is always, as you know from watching the show,
Where'd you grow up?

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Where did it all begin?

Speaker 3 (04:51):
Mark born in benson Hurst, moved to Flatlands area when
after my sister was born, parents needed a bigger house,
and from there when I got married, I went to
Canarsie for a little while, and then we moved to
Staten Island. So that's where it was until I left
New York. Smaller house and then we got the bigger

(05:13):
house as the kids were coming right. So, and from
retirement here I am Charlotte, North Carolina.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Good place to be. And what I've heard about is
for a few friends that live down there that have
retired and moved out of the Northeast. Is that what's
nice about Charlotte and the Carolinas in general is the climate.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
Is relatively reasonable all year round, even in the winter time.
The winter's not that bad.

Speaker 3 (05:35):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it gets cold, but you know,
you only have maybe one snow a season. I don't
think we had any last year, so I'm more than
happy to put that away. But they panic when snow comes.
Let me tell you, the drivers have no concept of
had to drive in it, and there's very little machinery
to clear it.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
Right, Well, there's something they relatively not used to. It
don't deal with a lot. We laugh, of course here
to Northeast.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
And I laugh.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
I will laugh scornfully at you when I'm suffering through
another New England winter and you're dealing with a relatively
tame one.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
But that's neither here nor there. I forgive you in advance.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
So just tell me, by the way, for those of
you the chat you know, the drill by now fire away.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
A question will highlight at the appropriate time if you
got one.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
You know, tell me where did the appetite for wanting
to get into EMS or some form of civil service,
even if you didn't know was the MS right off
the rip. What did that begin for you?

Speaker 3 (06:27):
All Right? Well, when I was a kid, I was
interested in the fire service when I was ya tall. Yeah,
and my grandparents, my grandfather in particular, used to take
me to the local firehouse on Snyder Avenue. And I
recently found the photo of me there. I think I
was maybe sixty years old, but one of the old
helmets and a really antique vehicle. But you know, I

(06:51):
kind of went away with that. My real goal as
I was getting through high school was I wanted to
become a veterinarian. I was working for a couple of
local vets. I loved animals, and it just didn't work out.
You know, the college I chose was not the right
one to give me the grades to get into Cornell
by any means. But on the other hand, it did

(07:12):
give me my future profession, and it gave me my
future wife, mostly due to my roommate. He comes in
one day and he's going to talk to me. He
was a member of the campus had its own ambulance
corps for the campus, and he says, come join the
ambulance corps. It's a good way to meet girls. So

(07:34):
sure enough, I went down there and that I did.
The girl came knocking on the door for him, so
I took her too. The strange thing that you may
also find out, you guys know Gary Obanowitz. Yeah, he
was the director of the New York Fire Museum. He's
got his own antique Chiefs corp And stuff. He was

(07:59):
one of the vice president CID at the time, and
that's where I met him. So we've known each other
for a very long time. Yeah. So with that, I
ended up joining the Campbell's Corps. I liked it, decided
to take a leave of absence for college, took his
shot summer job for a commercial ambulance for like a

(08:20):
month and a half two months, and I decided to
apply to New York City EMS. So I decided I
wasn't going back. I'm going to just take the year
off and see where it takes me. And I got hired.
They took me in as an MVO. I had already
been an a MT, but the title wasn't recognized and
they were in the process of changing over at that
point of building the Corman program where they were cross

(08:43):
training the drivers and the ambulance text. So because of that,
I had no seniority, so they just couldn't couldn't recognize
it for a while, and I ended up being an MVO.
Started out and over in the year and did the
whole tour of the city of the Bronx and Brooklyn
and act and communications until the medic Court program came

(09:05):
and came around. They sent down a notice one day
that they were going to restart the medic program. Now
I had known the guys in the original class because
one of my later assignments was up at Jacoby, so
I got to see the pilot program. I got to
know most of them, at least on a superficial level,
and they knew my face. And one of the guys says,
you know, stick around, they're going to be starting it soon.

(09:26):
And sure enough he was right. So I ended up
passing all the exams and got into the second paramedic
program at Jacoby in seventy seven.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
Around that time, Yeah, we're talking with Mark Peck here
on volume seventy of the Best of the Bravest Interviews
with the Ft and Wiselie. I'm going to jump into
that for a moment. Oh, by the way, Dave Byrne
says hello as well. He crossed pas me. I believe
for a time.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
Yeahs.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
But one of the things that I wanted to pass
off is he messaged me Kenny Bowen and grew up
on the same block as you. Yes, and he ended
up becoming a sergeant at first a police officer, later
a sergeant YP the Emergency Service.

Speaker 3 (10:01):
He know he's.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
Previously been out this program. So good to see you, Kenny.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
He wanted me to send his regards, so he sends
his regards to you and remembers you well and remembers
you being a good guy.

Speaker 3 (10:09):
So yeah, we kind of reconnected here.

Speaker 2 (10:11):
So yeah, very small world. I'm like, hey, he messaged
me on Facebook. When I put the promo out for you,
I'm like, wow, what do you know?

Speaker 1 (10:17):
What do you know?

Speaker 2 (10:18):
So kind of like I covered with Jerry Gombo a
couple of weeks ago in that interview, although it was
a quicker turnaround for him, you became a medic not
long after you know, becoming an EMT. It was only
a couple of years that went by from an EMT
shirt to a medic sirt. So do you think, and
this is kind of what I talked about with Jerry,
you could dive into it here. Do you think getting
serted so quickly as a medic not too long that is,

(10:40):
after getting your EMT helped you because the curriculum kind
of rolled over.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
I don't think it hurt me. I don't think it
hurt me. I was still kind of fresh in a
lot of it, but I wasn't experienced. I really wasn't
at that point. But the good news of it was
that I had the college pre RECs, so that a
lot of the preliminary stuff that you have to get to,

(11:08):
stuff that I all knew. Between that and believe it
or not, between the animals, you know, there was a
lot of commonality in treating some of the diseases and
some of the procedures.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
So brought together pretty pretty easily. So how long was it?

Speaker 2 (11:23):
I mean now, it's like a year and a half.
Back then at Jacoby, how long? How long was the
curriculum for medica?

Speaker 3 (11:28):
It was shorter for the first course the course than us.
We only went maybe I think we started in August
and we graduated in December, which is when they sent
us up. But we didn't have the formal graduation until January,
so it wasn't all that long. But it was full time.

(11:49):
The course I'm sure has really grown back and forth,
you know, over the years, so I don't know, but
it was a good education we had. We had better
I think, better teachers because most of it was done
by doctor Jacobson. I mean, not to get on you know,
our medics teachers now, but you know we were getting

(12:10):
full fledged medical courses in some of this stuff.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
Right by an actual doctor.

Speaker 2 (12:16):
So yeah, anyhead, that's, as you said, not a knocking
any of the teachers that we have now.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
A lot of theop are good. I have good fortune
to work with.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
Some of them, but yeah, back then a bit of
a different animal.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
So we do. I think we have the picture of
Madic three eighty and the Q.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
I loaded it in to be able to put it
up here tonight because you sent me down a trip
of his a history buff memory link ran and I
never lived this in real time, okay to kind of
see it through your eyes, and we have it here.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
That one is actually the first unit at Coney Island.
That was three eighty five. Yeah, that was about six
months after we graduated, and the next class came out
and we started the service. A number of other stations
Coney Island being one.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
So I'm sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 3 (12:57):
Yeah, so I went from from King's County to there
King's County. We spent the you know, that's six months
at spent some time as a supervisor in later, but
that's later in the story.

Speaker 2 (13:08):
Yeah, say, originally a King's County for a little bit
and then not, you know, not too long after that
is when you made the transition over.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
One thing, I want.

Speaker 2 (13:15):
One thing I wanted to touch on with you as
well is were you were talking about.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
Radio contact protocols.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
I mean that's a bit of a it's so huge now,
I mean, communications is a whole chapter.

Speaker 3 (13:25):
Now.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
I remember when I was going through EMT school the
second time in the fire cat because the first time
it's not the charm, but the second time was, uh,
you know, it's a whole there's a whole chapter dedicated
to the usage of codes, usage of communications when not
to communicate. Even so working on that back then, tell
me about it, because again, especially in New York City,
you gotta hop on the radio.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
But there's times where maybe you don't have to hop
on the radio.

Speaker 3 (13:45):
Well, I think your concern or your your question about
at least when when we got a little bit of
talk together was about use of protocols versus having to
call in for every procedure. I mean, realistically, we only
had a couple of years of the first class before
the way you know, we came out, MAC hadn't existed,

(14:08):
you know, you know, the program there, the program at Beekman,
they were all separate at that point, but they formed
the MAC Committee while our class was in, which started
to coordinate everything. It started to pull together standing order protocols,
which did Jacobi Medix had to a degree, but it
was a lot. They were in I don't know, Murky
your water back then, but they were allowed to do

(14:29):
a lot because they had the confidence of both the
staff there and the nursing and the physicians. So we
ended up starting with a small book of standing order
protocols and once you got to you know, the basics
being done, you would call in if you needed certain drugs.
Some drugs were standing order, like for cardiac arrest. You

(14:50):
could start, but as you got into it, they wanted
you to call the doc at that point and get
him involved. And it went that way and it still
remains that way. But the protocol book is now much thicker.
You know, they do a lot more. We treat a
lot more conditions than we started with. We didn't even
have pediatrics when we started. You know, if you were
a child, we had no als protocol for you. You know,

(15:14):
So the the whole system grew and we we were
one of the stepping stones.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
In it, because I mean one of the things that
also came up to was med control, even for EMTs.
I mean, at least in Connecticut that is where I am.
You know when to call med control versus when not
to call met control because you do have the standing
order certain medications you can assist the patient with versus
others where you're going to have to see special permission
from the hospital and the doctors on standby, so you know,

(15:41):
dealing with it back then. Not to say that some
form of it didn't exist previously, but I feel like
around this time, and correctly if I'm wrong, it started
to become a little bit more formalized. You know, the
basis of it at least was there, and as you said,
it grew as the years progressed.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
Having e mts starting to call in only began with
high risk refusals for a while, possibly situations where they
have a dispute with either any MT on the scene
or a physician on the scene, like the patient's physician
is on the scene. Problem was cool. So they didn't

(16:16):
really get into that until a number of years after us.
And now you know, they've got a number of other things.
But they also have standing orders for you know, the EpiPen,
the albuterol. I know they've extended even after I left.
They're doing things. I mean, they didn't have the fibrillators
in the early years of the program. The AEDs came out.

(16:37):
I think Hotsolo was the first to have them in
garretson Beach got an early model of it and it
didn't work all that well, but it put us on
the path of them finally building quality equipment that really
does make it worth the money.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
You look at some of the stuff that ambulance is
carrying now, I mean even some of the entry focusing
specifically on the MS, it's basically a hospital on wheels,
especially if it's functioning at an alsle always most ambulances are.
It's incredible to see. And one of the things I
want to touch on too is being a preceptor. It's
not you know, it's not an easy job because you're

(17:15):
thinking about what you want to do as a manic.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
But you have to watch this.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
It's kind of like a baby bird, right, you got
to watch them gain their wings for real time. And
I'm sure you had some students that it was a struggle,
but you had some students that really blossom. So I mean, again,
you had a passion for teaching. I mentioned it in
my introduction. What was it about not just learning this
for yourself, but why to teach others that really appealed
to you.

Speaker 3 (17:36):
Well, I kind of got into this out of necessity.
One of the other things that I got involved with
when I was still an MVO was Flatland's Volunteer Ambulance Core.
They were just forming and I kind of got in
at the ground level. I ended up being their first
training director and I had to start teaching CPR and
operational program stuff when they finally got on the road

(18:00):
and were proved to go out and start service. So
I kind of had that under the belt. So with
CPR that was good. I ended up getting involved with
Coney Island Hospital. Doctor Sultani and the er was doing
the ACLS, the advanced cardiac life support stuff, so he
got me involved, and I ended up becoming an ACLS

(18:21):
instructor as well, and I was teaching there for a while.
So all these little bits and pieces, and then the
expansion of the of the Endometic program, it just fell
naturally into place. With each new class that was graduating from,
like Jacoby one through Jacoby twelve or so Jacobe eleven,

(18:43):
they were doing expansion. You know, they would start adding
new units on start new hospitals that they're basing out of.
So what I basically got, most of the older guys
got was there were three three men in a schedule
for a shift. Two of you were working, one of
you was off. Well, they ended up taking one of
those three spots and making it reserved for a new graduate.

(19:07):
So for a number of years you always had your
one partner and then the two of you had a student.
So you know, half the week you would work with
someone new and you would teach them. And I just
I enjoyed it. I really did. I ended up working
with so many people that I didn't know as medical
students even when they were in class that later on

(19:31):
in life they reminded me, yeah, I was your student,
and I'm going I didn't even know you then you
know you were with me for a week or you know,
for the six month period if they were unlucky though
those of course I obviously knew. But I got to
meet a lot of people, and I ended up being
good at that. I was never a good lecturer. That's

(19:51):
the one thing I found. I also got into being
practical instructor out of the academy for a little while,
and I stayed with that until I think we moved
out to Staton Island and the commute just became too much.
You get to see yourself in these people. You get
to see your values in people that you teach. And

(20:12):
that's kind of the way I looked at it. And
it's worked, and it's, like I said, a lot of
people thanked me when I retired for that introduction, and
I got to meet a lot of really great folks.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
That sounds like it, you know, as we'll talk about tonight,
and you know, a place into one of the other
questions I was going to ask before I get to that.
Of course, Mitch Stearn's watching. We were talking about him
off here. Mitch, my phone numbers and description of this
episode to give me a call. What you can't because
I want you to come on the show as well,
says you were the best partner that he ever had.
Steve Kurr is also watching, as we knew he'd be
in the chat, so good to see as always my friend,

(20:47):
of course, the previous guest at the show.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
And there's a.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
Story that Mitch put in there because there was a
question we had in the chat. It's a good one
from Banana Tree Gamer about violence against EMTs back then.
He lives in England or she and it always seems
to be an issue into which Then Mitch added that
you guys had a fridge throwing us down a stairwell
at you guys.

Speaker 3 (21:07):
Uh that was I don't think that was us. It
may have been him. He maybe work with someone else.
I don't think I've had a fridge. I've had other things.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
Because Mark and I had a refrigerator thrown down the
stairwell in the pit, that's what he put in the chat.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
I'm not sure.

Speaker 3 (21:21):
Well, we used to see airmail coming off the housing projects.
They would used to try people coming into the end
entrance TV come down with that one day. I don't remember.
I don't remember the refrigerator though. Sorry Mitch, I can't
imagine that.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
Yeah, I can't imagine something like that coming down at
me down a staircase, I mean a fridge. I don't know,
but people have some real rage issues out there. Steve
Carr also has in the chat Medic thirty two X
ray because he mentioned earlier he was Jacobe eleven. Medic
thirty two X ray was added in that time period,
I worked midnights, covered penson Hurst and bay Ridge. To
your point on that, To your point on that, Mark Peck,

(21:58):
of course, especially as producer Victor notes in the chat,
if it's a full fridge, Mark Peck's our guest here
on Mike Davin Podcast for episode three hundred and fifty nine.
This is the best, the gravest Milestone volume seventy. So
you mentioned, I like what you said at the end
there you saw a lot of yourself the people you
were teaching, because you saw it's worth noting you saw
the rotations kind of from start to finish, not just

(22:19):
in the field and the rotations there and getting patient touches,
but in the emergency room as well.

Speaker 3 (22:24):
Yeah, we used to go in when they were doing
their ego time and they would have signed on one
of the season Maddex and the fact again that it
was Cony Island worked out ideally for so many people
because we had a great relationship with the nurses and
the physicians there, so there, you know, anything that we needed,
we basically could find. You need to see something, all right,

(22:45):
we'll find the doc for you. Who can explain it.
You know, I loved it. It really did well.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
It sounds like it. You know.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
Listen, it was a great, great gig for you. And
that's something that you know, even all these years later,
you're still speaking fondly of. So I mean, I do
want to talk about this too, because there was a
brief chapter in your career and it takes a lot
of guts to do something like this. You made lieutenant
in nineteen eighty four. You had the rank for six
months in New York City ems inutenant that is, had
the rank for six months, but resigned it after those

(23:14):
six months because you know, you really want to stay
out in the field, and I guess there was more
of an administrative job, so I mean testing for getting
it as big. But sometimes you move up the ladder
because of what other people think. Maybe you want to
stay there, but no I mean, listen, you knew where
your heart was and you made a leap of faith
that worked out.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
So just tell me through to take.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
Me through first passing test and what may ultimately made
you realize, you know what, this isn't for me.

Speaker 3 (23:38):
Originally there was no civil service test for lieutenant and
that began very very and late in the seventies, maybe
early in maybe early eighties, somewhere in there, and I
still I had no you know, no desire. There were
a couple of lieutenants that I like, but I never
saw that as my flam function. I love patient care,

(24:02):
I loved working with Nu Medics, I loved having a partner.
When I ended up taking the promotion, it was after
I had deferred it probably about four or five times.
And it wasn't until Robert Becker finally said you've got
to do this for me that he convinced me to
go and try it. And I ended up being on

(24:22):
a split shift at King's County and it was a
miserable shift. You know, you can't get any kind of
time clock in your head for when you sleep and
when do you get up. The commute to Brooklyn to
King's County was a lot rougher than getting into Coney Island,
but I ended up trying it, and finally I just
got fed up. One afternoon, I was stuck on a

(24:43):
Sunday and mandated to do the week's overtime reports, and
I finally said I've had enough of this and I
resigned and I said I'm going back, went back to
Coney Island, and I have not regretted it a day since.
You know, supervisors are much more physical now, much more

(25:05):
using their their knowledge and their skills now than it
was back then. There was no field control back then.
You know, now, at least you go out, you're interact
with a crew. You see how they're doing, you see
if there's a problem, You stand up for them when
there is a problem. You know. That wasn't then. That
wasn't what you had. It was just look at the
papers and sign. So yeah, I say, I don't regret

(25:29):
it a bit.

Speaker 1 (25:30):
And I don't wake it.

Speaker 3 (25:32):
Yeah. And I think the other part of it also
was the money wasn't there back then. You know, I
was on top medic salary, so I was making as
much as a starting captain at that point. So I
wasn't going to see a pay raise of any you
know size for at least five years. So what do
you you know, why am I going to do this?

Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, you know, there's no incentive there. And I've heard
a lot about that too.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
When you go up and rank, it's it's either a
minimal pay raise or it's actually a pay So I'm like, yeah,
it's kind of not sensible to me.

Speaker 3 (26:03):
They can't do a pay cut. They have to give
you a minimum increase, which was the for me five
hundred bucks. Yeah, five hundred dollars for this NA not
worth it?

Speaker 1 (26:11):
No, not at all.

Speaker 2 (26:12):
I mean now, I mean, I know supervisors tend to
have their own cars, like you said, I mean cars
for the field. That is, they're out in the field.
They're able to be a little bit more involved than
that as much in the office. But back then it
was a different concept. But if you're not doing what
you love to do, and obviously you're still in the
position where mentally and physically you still can do it,
you know, why take the job? Ultimately? I mean, it's
one thing if you're at the end of your career

(26:33):
and you got to have that gut feel, as some
guys do, we're not not going to Hey, you know
what I think I got to get out of the
field to get into the office.

Speaker 1 (26:39):
That wasn't your case.

Speaker 3 (26:40):
Well that one other difference that you see now versus
then is supervisors are much better trained and experienced in
MCIs right, you know, things like that were you know,
you had a second alum fire every night in the Bronx.
When I was working up there, the second alarm fire,
you know, you really didn't see much in the way
of you know, patients unless something went really really bad.

(27:03):
Nothing of that I ever got to. I managed to
miss all the big ones by fifteen minutes. It was uncanny.
My unit has gone three times to big events right
after I got off duty. So, hey, you know this
is what it is. Yeah, So the supervisors have a

(27:24):
lot more responsibility now and they benefit the cruise a
lot more with that experience.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
I think absolutely absolutely, And and Steve Carr brought this
up when he was not a couple of years ago,
that you think of an m c I, you kind
of think of, unfortunately, something like that what happened a
couple of weeks ago in Midtown Manhattan, that yes, that
is an MCI, but a fire in which you have
multiple people injured. Ra even car accident, car accident, two
cars collide, there's three passengers.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
In one car to on the other. You got five injuries.
That's an MCI.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
There's a lot that meets to criteria that you know,
guys are especially even now, even a fire duties down.
There's so many things that happened. Your MBAs, your shootings,
you're stabbing, Especially in a large city like New York,
even in years where crime was down, there's enough of
it to go around. You're gonna get your hands dirty.
You're gonna get that experience one way or another.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
You know, New York expanded because of all of those issues.
And I'm sure you know Steve will tell you a
lot more about it. But the implementation of SOD I
think was a major benefit, long overdue, because now you
have people that are well versed coming on as these
disasters are getting at you know, maybe later on we'll

(28:33):
get to the point where I was working in Charlotte,
which I did after I retired. When you're looking at
MCI out here, you've got to cringe, because if it's
a big one, you have a lot of time until
you start to see, you know, any number of units
coming in, particularly if you're in the surrounding counties with
an MCI. You know, we've gotten dispatched to a number

(28:55):
of times. Just to make it clear to those who
don't know. After I left New York, I went to
work Charlotte, North Carolina for about ten years. So yeah,
it's a lot harder, even a big, big collision. You know,
you've got to wait for units to come from across
the city to come and staff for all of this,
and they've worked out a lot, but it's it's not

(29:16):
as well choreographed as it is in New York.

Speaker 1 (29:21):
No, not at all.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
Again, night and day, Eric Stone adds in the chat.
He sends his regards. He says, Hi, Mark Bopaul as well.
Mark has partnered with my father after he graduated at
Jacoby Medic ten class at Coney Island Hospital in to
mid eighties.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
So he sends us.

Speaker 3 (29:36):
Dave David was one of my best best partners. Shame
what happened to him.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
So that brings us into nineteen eighty five and dignitary
protection because I mentioned this with Chief Gombo, that Bob
Becker and Zach Golfar, Ben Steve, we're really really thinking
ahead of the you know, ahead of the curve back
then in terms of trying to bring em s out
of the dark ages. Because as I covered before with
guys who worked New York City EMS and either went
out to the FD or went out too the PD

(30:05):
in some cases that it was an agency that did
a lot with a little back then, and they're you know,
the unfortunate thing with the MS is it's always been
treated as the bastard stepchild, if you will. Never was
that more evident in the seventies and eighties. But things
are starting to change. Becker's thinking forward, so those Gold
Farvin Kurrent, a few other people, dignitary protection comes up,
not that it was invented then, but nevertheless, it's interesting concept.

(30:27):
Un visits, presidential visits, anybody significant, a celebrity, you got
to be a part of that.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
How did that come to be?

Speaker 3 (30:33):
We actually just ended up being an expansion. It was
already the theory of it was already in place. Did
Jacobe Wan medics weren't DPU detail. Whenever the president would
come in, they would pull one in the medics and uh,
you know, use that for the moticade because before that,
I don't even know I'm sure that they had city
ambulances involved, but I don't even know if there was

(30:54):
anything organized back then. So you know, Medic one and
Medic two up in the Bronx were the DPU detail
and they would take an extra set of equipment and
if they would go. When our class graduated, they began
to put us into the program. So I think I

(31:14):
started when let's see, when Carter was president. Who came
for Reagan? Reagan came first, then Carter Carter than Reaga first, Noah,
Carter did come first. So I ended up doing that
and that's where they formalized it, where we would go
down with a secret service for training and they recruited
as many of us as they could. So the idea

(31:35):
of being, you know, one of us or a couple
of us will be off and we'll take the detail,
and that just plossomed with each new class that came out,
you know, every couple of months they would run a
new program and people would join up. But it was
it was good because number one, then you knew you
got vetted medics and experienced medics for it, but you

(31:56):
also had people that became familiar with the motor case
aid procedures. As well. You know, we had a similar
detail of fire always a sign people to do, the
venues that they go to, the hotelity stays in. There
are people that are detailed for the motorcate itself, for

(32:19):
the arriving hospital. It just expanded and either that in
every city now, so I think it gives them the
greatest amount of protection.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
Absolutely, it's good coordination because I mean there's many units
involved in this. I remember reading a book on the
NYPED Emergency Service Unit that Sam Katz wrote in the
mid nineties, and it talked about esu's robot, also ems's role.
If somebody goes down, you guys are right there with them. Now, granted,
obviously there's a little bit more protection with them involved
in the concept, but that immediate care is the name

(32:52):
of the game. Now, tell me what are the more
notable details, if any that stand out or people that
you got to cross paths.

Speaker 3 (32:58):
But through that detail, oh, I got to work with
a lot of people who were who were seniors, so
it was always a good experience. The I don't know
who did I get to know. I don't really think
I became, you know, close with anyone that I didn't
already know through through most of that, even through the

(33:19):
training I ended up we ended up doing a drill
one day out on Governess Island, which was probably the
first time that we ever did a simulated attack scenario
complete with explosives, which was kind of interesting. But that, yeah,
that that put a number of us together for the practice,

(33:40):
and not much else to tell about that.

Speaker 2 (33:45):
Hey, notable excuse me, celebrities or historical figures that you
got to meet through that detail.

Speaker 3 (33:50):
Not really, not really, not really. We were always, especially
in the beginning, it was very low key. You didn't
even go up and shake the presidents and they would
come out to you at the airport or something. You
go down the line and if you stood in the line,
you get a handshake. But no, we on those details.
We were at the bottom run of the city people,

(34:14):
even as far as the hotels that we were staged in,
Like we were up at the Waldorf Astoria and there
would be a room for police and for fire and
most of them would camp out and claim the bed,
claim the couch, and we got what was left. You know,
we were sitting on the floor waiting in case anything happened.

(34:34):
While he was in the hotel.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
So there you go.

Speaker 2 (34:39):
I mean, in theory, if the president goes down the
first people that are getting to it, it's a secret service.
I mean, if you're if you're the medic, even if
you're the assigned medic or e MT to him or
you know you're you're.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
Probably not going to get there.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
You probably that's not out of a lack of cares,
just there's so many people that are going to converge.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
You won't even get the chick. You won't get within
one hundred yards.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
Well at some points, at some point you will. It
all depends where they are. I mean, obviously we have
first interest is getting him into a secure area, right
And we actually got called for to respond out of
the room one day at the Waldorf the It was
shortly after George Bush's incident where he passed out. So

(35:18):
when this thing came, it's like, oh no, this is real.
But it ended up being one of the high end
people attending who passed out, so they called us down. Anyway,
we did the initial survey and then they got a
got a regular aim it loves to come in and transport.
So but that was the way the system was supposed

(35:39):
to work because Our primary was just to be there
for you know, the dignitaries themselves.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
Absolutely another.

Speaker 2 (35:47):
Again, it's a reunion, like I said, off the off
the air and on the ar it's New York City
EMS re union tonight is Bill Gross's in the chat
and he'll be on the show next month. Uh he
senses regards to good to see if my friend look
forward to our chat coming up in early set. Now,
just as important as setting these ambulances out on the
road is making sure they have what they need. But
it can be a pain in the neck when nevertheless,

(36:07):
it's you know, kind of like that old line from
the Faith in the War song, we care a lot.
It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.
And what I'm talking about is getting the als supplies
from the ambulance. Now, depending on where you are, sometimes
you can be a pain in the neck to hag.
Other places it's a little bit easier. But as far
as dictator, okay, here's what the bus needs, here's how
much of it it needs. What was that process like for.

Speaker 3 (36:28):
You in the beginning, It just basically started with us
trying to figure out what do we use in a protocol.
There were some rough guidelines that the administration sent down
and we ended up building on that. Each YEARNIT kind
of set their drug box up a little bit differently.
Some people started doing shortcuts of not taking all of

(36:50):
their medications in on a low priority or what they
precede as low priority calls, because you'd have to walk
up you know, six or seven flights, and that became
a problem for a number of people who got caught short.
So we finally ended up getting standardized inventory and lists
of that supplied for us in the beginning was through

(37:14):
the hospitals that we were at, so Coney Island. We
would get all of our drugs through and they were
very generous. We had a great medical correct directed doctor Sultani,
and a great liason with nursing and with central supply,
so we ended up getting some things that made the
job easier, like things to secure the ivs instead of tape.

(37:37):
We would get drugs in certain forms and pre filled
that other people weren't getting. At one point we were
actually doing trades with Bellevue and I got this, you
got that, And ultimately that system it just became too
big and had no controls over the medications, so we
ended up being supplied directly from Maspath. They developed a

(38:05):
pharmacy on at Goldwater Hospital and we had people that
came around and did the medication rooting and all the
medication inventory through that system. But I ended up, you know,
each station kind of had one person that coordinated care

(38:26):
of all of that stuff, you know, keeping track of it.
If we needed something, we had to put in a
supply of requisition and that was me for a lot
of years. What we never did with that. We always
kind of got the better end of the deal with.

Speaker 1 (38:41):
That, so as you should have.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
I mean, you're the ones that are gonna be out
there in the field dealing with it. And then again,
as I covered before with the veteran guys, ems, are
you the only ambulance core in the city. No, different
hospitals have their own ambulance course, you see them all
the time. Lenox Hill Mount sign a New York Presbyterian
mats of fuere. So but then again, you know, listen,
everybody needs it to a fair degree. And I'm laughing

(39:05):
at the trade system you see now, these trades and sports. Yeah,
we set this player for cash and a player to
be named later. I'm just imagining something similar going on
with alsupplies back then.

Speaker 3 (39:15):
Well, one of the good things that the system did
for us is that they started to what are oh
I just had a thought that did slipped me. Oh yeah.
We started getting more involved with the equipment that EMS

(39:36):
was actually purchasing, you know, instead of them choosing the
drug box, which was in the beginning based off of
the first class, we did something. They started getting into customization.
So we finally started having our drug bags, airway bags,
custom design and I got in on a lot of
that in the beginning on field testing, this critiquing what

(39:59):
was good about what was bad about it, even when
it was still in the pre order stage, and that
ended up getting us a lot of stuff that was
definitely a lot more functional, lighter. You know, they started
with the soft packs back then. Didn't really like them
for certain reasons, but you compare them to what they
have now, and there's a whole generation of netics out

(40:20):
there that are getting commercial packs where the companies are
finally putting the research into it, and the city is
still going to customize their basic product. So that was
something that was not happening in the beginning. And I
think there's a lot of people that well, thank the
people that came before them for getting them on that track.

Speaker 1 (40:41):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
Mark Peck's our guest here and it's volume seventy of
the best and bravest interviews with the fting wives elite.
Look at the chat again and there's a lot of
the chat is acts, which I appreciate. Mid to turn again,
was it you with the bay Ridge million Dollar Band?

Speaker 3 (40:57):
Yes, that was me.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
What's story here?

Speaker 3 (41:01):
We had it shooting out in Bensonhurst. I think that
was one in a gas station if I remember right,
and it was older Italian gentleman who was our patient.
But there was a lot of people from the neighborhood
around the scene. And as we started to transport, I

(41:23):
had a couple of guys that, you know, we're not
taking no for an answer. You know, this guy was
in critical condition. We can't take a rider on this,
I'm sorry. Finally ended up having to have the cops
pulled this one guy out who was not taking no
as politely as most families do under the circumstances. So
we transported him to Coney Island. I think this was

(41:46):
from the pre trauma center days. So he did go
into Coney and I'm outside cleaning up Mitch's inside doing
the paperwork, and I find what looked like one of
the police shield leather shield cases on the floor. It
was one of those folded with a little snap on it,

(42:09):
and I figured it was a badge. So I opened
it up and I said, this is not a badge,
all right, I bring it inside a figure. It's got
to come off the patient. So I think I gave
it to one of the cops who was there, because
obviously you couldn't just leave something like that around have
to be accounted for. And I found out as we

(42:29):
were starting to clean the ambulance that this one guy
was at the hospital and now they were getting really upset.
Where is it? Where is it? Well, the thing was
opened up and it had a bearer bond for like
a million dollars inside it. He wasn't concerned about the patient,
he was concerned about finding this. So, yeah, I had

(42:51):
a million dollar bond in my hand, go figure.

Speaker 1 (42:54):
And this was it?

Speaker 3 (42:57):
Even not guys that you wanted to mess with. No, No,
we we were lucky that we never really had any
bed blood or issues with any of those that were
participating in the rumor. Rumored criminals family.

Speaker 2 (43:15):
Yes, and in a certain Italian American subculture of mitch
Ter and ads was it was route.

Speaker 1 (43:20):
Was Ralph Spureau who was shot. That's the name I'm
seeing in the chat.

Speaker 3 (43:28):
I don't know the name.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
Because as soon as you mentioned the Italian neighborhood, an
older man, that's where my first like, yeah, I have
an idea as to where this is going.

Speaker 3 (43:40):
I mean, we've had a film of people that were
the the recipient of the bullet. Unfortunately, I had one
up on King's Highway that was kind of memorable because
his foot got stuck on the accelerator of the car
and he was just burning rubber in place. That's another

(44:01):
story further on.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
We lean into that one later on.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
Yeah, Steve Kerr adds to one of the topics we
were talking about previously, and the chat again is carrying
the program to night. We also had equipment of today's
medics know nothing about massed trousers were valuable too for
penetrating trauma. Going back to what we were talking about earlier
about als supplies. So there was that and in light
of MCI's as well, we want to add something before

(44:27):
we continued.

Speaker 3 (44:29):
No, I'm good.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
I'm good, okay, in light of what we're talking about
earlier about MCI's I didn't want to ask you this.
So you get a series of them in the early
nineties for different reasons. Ninety one the train derailment underneath
or the operator had one too many to drink. Ninety
three the trades and are bombing even in ninety two
when there was a lot of flooding and people were
stuck and injured during the floods of December, I believe

(44:50):
in ninety two. So there's a lot that's happening. Trained
to ram and again above ground on Williamsburg in ninety five.

Speaker 1 (44:56):
You know.

Speaker 2 (44:57):
So as far as the MCI initiatives back then, how
what how much involvement did you have in rewriting anything
back then or just training people how to deal with
certain scenarios since these were happening.

Speaker 3 (45:08):
I think Steve probably ended up doing more than I did.
For most of my career, I was rather lucky. Like
I said, I was usually fifteen minutes too soon or
too late for the unit that went. When I was BLS,
they had the trail the plane that went down on
Rockaway Boulevard, My unit went fifteen minutes after I left

(45:28):
the station for the wall Bounce fire. It was my
day off, you know, and that's just the way it
kind of ran. So I did not get to see
very many of those. I mean, We've had a lot
of smaller stuff, you know, with collisions and pin jobs
and stuff, but I've managed to miss most of the

(45:50):
big ones. And it's not because I wanted to. But
you know, the trade center was you know, you volunteered.
That's the only reason that we went there.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
You go, speaking of volunteers, you were a founding member
of the Flatlands Volunteer Ambulance Corps and can help write
some of their procedures as well.

Speaker 1 (46:09):
Now I imagine like this is a cool point.

Speaker 2 (46:12):
In your career because you get to really see something
from the ground up. And on top of that, you know,
you'd had a lot of experience to this point, so
you know what works and what you want to implement.
But you also know, and this is where the beauty
of the freedom comes in, and how to write these
procedures what doesn't work. So with that in mind, what
was the general criteria that you wanted to establish, Here's

(46:34):
how we'll do things, and here's what I know has
been recommended, but I found in my experience does not work,
so we'll refrain from this.

Speaker 3 (46:43):
I was in on the very bottom level, all right.
I was there when they finally went into service, but
I don't think I did probably more than maybe ten shifts.
And this was before the core was known, so people
were not calling at that point. But the thing that
I started with, we had our own operating guard for EMS.

(47:03):
I started looking at that and looking at, well, what
do they need? What will work for them? But everyone
else pretty much was inexperienced. Flatlands ended up turning into
a good training ground to recruit people to EMS. There's
a lot of people that followed after that, so they

(47:28):
used their experience there to get in, but they had
patient contact at that point. This was after the new
ambulances and stuff arrived and people with the community was
calling them. We were just really introducing the concept to them.
I no, no, there's not much, not much else. The
things that I did try and emphasize, and this was

(47:50):
where I kind of met the but I'm just a
volunteer attitude and that was problematic back then, but that
slowly went away as they would start to have more
contact with doing calls and more contact with interacting with
Coney Island units as well.

Speaker 2 (48:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's tough because there are those that
want to be in it just for the sake of
the uniform. You know how cool it looks in the uniform,
and this is any professional fire department police ems. And
then there are those that are in it because they
really really love it. So you find your diamonds in
the rough. But then again, it is frustrating when you
meet that attitude. It's like, well, then why are you here?

(48:31):
What's the point?

Speaker 3 (48:32):
I mean, when it's new, they don't have that experience
of now having calls and having done things that make
them feel better, things that made them want to study
and bone up on things, change protocols, do something differently.
You know, we would do it teaching ambulance one on
one back then, and that was it. And unfortunately the

(48:54):
people that came in, some of them were really good,
and like I say, others were you know, I'm just
here to volunteer for three hours a week and I'm
not going to you know, I don't have to train
this hard. And that was a hard thing to overcome,
and I think they finally did, thank God, because the
people that were coming out in the later years were
definitely worthwhile people to take in, and we benefited as

(49:16):
as we did from a lot of the volent cause
around the city of their alumni.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
In the calls for service, demand it. You don't.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
You don't have the luxury when you're walking in to
report of Priority one chess pain, or you got a
diff breather, or you got anybody who's unconscious for a
variety of reasons. I'm responsive. Look at me using big
empt terms, the ink can still not even try out
on my serch. But nevertheless, you know, the point still stands.
You don't have the luxury to say, ah, I'm just
a volunteer. No, even if you're not actively involved in

(49:45):
the call. For example, I volunteer for the Westate Fire Department.
You know, one of the things I like doing, one
of the things that one of my lieutenants encourages me
to do is even if you're not actively involved in
the call, watch learn because there's going to come a
time where you are and you're going to maybe even
the lead on the call.

Speaker 1 (50:02):
What are you going to do?

Speaker 3 (50:04):
You know?

Speaker 1 (50:04):
So that came out.

Speaker 3 (50:06):
One of the nice entry points early in the program.
Of the paramedics when we started coming out was we
were now becoming a resource available to the volunteer ambulances
because none of them had paramedics. Hotsola didn't have medics.
We used to doing a lot of runs with HATSLA
in Coney Island and Seagate. We started to get introduced

(50:30):
to them a little bit when I was at King's County,
but they still weren't at the point of being accepting
up there, and that's changed a lot. They started running
their own paramedic programs of taking people that are graduates
of the new medic programs around the city. So that's
all expanded out, but they learned how to work as
a unit and what als could do and why it

(50:53):
benefits their patients to call us, because you know, we
had a lot of saves with a lot of those
volunteer ambulance cause it wasn't just our own people, right.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
I mean, you can get good calls with both that.
I do want to ask it, and it may seem
a silly question on his face. As a medic, did
you prefer working als normally or B or did you
have a preference for BLS or did it not matter?

Speaker 3 (51:18):
I loved working als. There was just so much more
I felt that I could do for people. Yeah, you know,
even in medic years, you know, we normally didn't do
BLS assignments unless yeah, very early, if you were an
extra medic and they didn't have someone to pay you
up with out in another borrow, they would put you
on a BLS truck. The only thing I ever really

(51:39):
looked for was the beach unit. Back then, we had
the Cushmans doing the summer detail, and they would allow
medics to do that if there were no EMT volunteers.
So every once in a while I got to do
that and it was nice because we could take at
We didn't have the fibrillators back then, but we could

(52:00):
take our life pack with us and we could take
our airway kits. So if you did get something, the
protocol allowed us to intubate. It allowed us to defibrillate
before our own EMTs, you know, had that awareness of equipment.
So yeah, Conry Islands in the summer definitely worth the trip.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
Yeah, definitely, you know, it was worth it back then,
especially during the heat waves. I remember watching the story
and again, it's great to see these throwbacks. Nineteen ninety three,
there was a particularly bad heat wave in New York
City where you see people and again there's a there's
one guy sprawled out in the beach. You know, hottest
can be what's you doing with cool and stuff down
drinking a beer?

Speaker 3 (52:43):
You know?

Speaker 1 (52:44):
So they again, it kept you guys.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
Busy, allowed you guys to see a lot of cool things,
enjoy nice weather in the city. So yeah, if I
could be a fly on the wall and go back
in time, I'd love to go back to something like that.
Witness that if time machines were real. One thing I
do want to ask you about too get into nineteen
ninety six, is you know the ballgame changes right. You'd
been independent from the FDNY. It talked about for years.

(53:06):
You've been under Health and Health and Hospital's Corps. But
in the spring of ninety six, Commissioner Safer, right before
he leaves become the police commissioners, one of his final
access Fire Commissioner is to see this merger through.

Speaker 1 (53:18):
So now you're.

Speaker 2 (53:19):
Under the banner of big Brother. There was rumors the
NYPD may take it. Fdn Y ultimately got it. So
changing over, I mean procedurely on the ambulance are still
doing a lot of the same stuff, but what was
different for you and what was the most laring change
ninety six ninety seven you had to adapt to.

Speaker 3 (53:36):
Most of us were not in favor of that merger.
We figured if we had to go, we had much
more in common with emergency service because the fire department
didn't run much in the way of THEMS calls. They
were at the very beginning of the CFR program, and
a lot of them did not take it seriously. They

(53:56):
didn't like doing the calls. I remember. It was also
somewhere close to the time when there was sub merging
of our people going over to them as recruits. So
we had stories of people who were EMTs and medics
being assigned to the shift as the designated CFR person

(54:17):
for the day. You take care of that ambulance and
will take care of you. You don't have to do
the floors. You know, that wasn't the way you go
into a program. It took a long time before it
really started getting better, and thankfully it did. You know,
the CFR program had its own tripping points. I guess

(54:40):
where some of the crews got in trouble for not
doing the right thing. We were lucky most of the station.
Let me change that. All of the stations that I
dealt with in the Coney Island sheeps at Bay Area
were very accommodating to us. We never had a problem
with them, never had an argument with And you know,

(55:01):
I had one guy say, you know, you're a little
bit different than some of the guys that are out
on the street. You don't take advantage of us. You
call us off and cancel us when you don't need us.
You know, what can we do for you? And that's
the way that the attitude developed through my entire career
because again later in Charlotte, the fire department was our
not only our DLS backup, but they were our first responders.

(55:24):
They're the only ones we were getting. So if you
had a critical patient, you were taking a couple of
firemen with you to assist on the transport. But the program,
everything started really getting getting better with time. I don't
know what else can I tell you about it up

(55:51):
to the point of the well, once the mergest started,
I mean we were into it. There was there was
no backing out. One funny story that I do tell
was when we were very new, we did a lot
of we always did a lot of patients who are
elderly and having neighbors dealing with them in the Coney
Island area. We went to one woman and we had

(56:13):
the new uniform I think it was the temporary uniform on.
They hadn't gone to the full blues yet. And she
goes to me at the end of the call, you
people are so much nicer than those people in the
green uniforms. I'm so glad the fire department has gotten
you over. And we looked at each other and we

(56:34):
just didn't say a word, you know, But that's that's
what it was. It was a learning curve for the
public as well, you know. The I mean, what they
have today and what they had in my later years
is a life changing event from where we started with it.
But it was growing pains.

Speaker 1 (56:54):
Of course, you know. Ninety six to nineteen ninety seven.

Speaker 2 (56:57):
Chief Nigro originally had the helm of it for that
first year before he transitioned to somebody else.

Speaker 3 (57:02):
You know.

Speaker 2 (57:03):
Again, the joke back then he mss it for every
minute sucks. But you know what, listen, he said, there's
gonna be growing pains with it. It's hard to believe
that next year because This is something that's been talked
about a lot on the program. It's the same thing
with the merger of the three police departments the year
before nine th ety five. It'll be thirty years next
year since that merger took place. Now there's a lot

(57:24):
of debate about if it was good or if it
wasn't good. There's a lot of pros and cons naturally
with anything. I think, ultimately, looking back almost three decades later,
more good than bad, more good than that, and I
think it's it's fitting. It's underneath the ft and y banner.

Speaker 1 (57:37):
Well.

Speaker 3 (57:37):
I mean, the major benefits of that were mainly the budget.
HC did not have the budget for vehicles. I don't know,
Fire didn't have it that well in the early year either,
but it was nice. I think we finally started to
see brand new ambulances coming in at about the two
year mark. The selection process for them was pretty much

(57:58):
still the same, but what they could say spend was
definitely better. You know, equipment wise, we did better, training wise,
people started to merge at the two year mark or
so on. Seeing the interactions was better. MCI's was unquestionably better.

(58:20):
You know, your coordination with with them at the command post.
What you do as far as patients inside vehicles changed inside,
I'm sorry, inside structures changed radically where they now have
crews that are competent to go into buildings underlimited circumstances.
You know, we used to tell them, you've got somebody

(58:41):
trapped up on the fifth floor of a fire. If
that fire is still going on up there, you've got
to bring them down. You know, we can't go inside.
I mean, you know, I had one one fire crew
on an overturn. I was stuck inside the vehicle. We
managed to get the patient out and I'm going take
them to that ambulance over there, and they took them
to the wrong one that already had patient. Little stuff

(59:03):
like that, but yeah, it the relationship is radically different.
Stations probably were another big, big learning curve. What they
tried to do with us in the beginning with the
battalion based dispatching was a total disaster. Having four units

(59:26):
sit on a street corner in a fake station that
we're going to build one day. That did not work
well at all, and it took that to fail before
they finally started, you know, doing what they did of
taking over abandoned firehouses, building new, totally new facilities. There
were a couple of mixed facilities. I think there's two

(59:48):
of them or three of them in this in the
station in the city. Staten Island was one of them
that ended up being a little bit of a problem
to some of the people I heard, but it started
to build a relationship between us and them, and it's
so different now it was when we started.

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
That's a good thing, you know, that's a good thing.
And naturally, it's gonna come along the way with time,
Like you said, the fundings better. Bill Grosse mentions, he'll
talk about it, you know, behind the scene, Warner plans
when he comes on, and I look forward to that
because I really want a definitive look at that. Commissioner
Safer painted a good picture. But I look forward to
your perspective as well, Bill, you know, and I again
I see it now. I mean, listen, I've said this before.

(01:00:29):
There's still certain.

Speaker 1 (01:00:30):
Departments without naming them, I'm not knocking.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
Them, but there's still certain fire departments that do not
do at least in the state of Connecticut any ems.

Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
But it's rare. Because I've said this on the program
many times.

Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
I'm talking about on the best of the braves EMS
for as much as some guys hate doing it, save
the fire service. When fire duty went down after the
war years. You know, again, I'm not saying there still
weren't other emergencies like car accidents or anything like that
the fire department had to respond to. But incorporating EMS
minded people in my estimation at least of the value

(01:01:03):
of the fire service and having people not only trained
to put fires out, but also trained asth medics and
EMT to respond to the most common calls there are,
even in cities that get a lot of fires, like
New York, which is these days EMS.

Speaker 3 (01:01:17):
Around the nation. I mean, you know, emergency that was
the start of planting the idea in their head, and
the first LA County program and the programs that were
going on in Pittsburgh and things. But you have departments
now realizing that they have a responsibility how you attack

(01:01:38):
that is different than a lot of places. You know,
LA still has their squads doing the medic but they're
turning it over to a second medic in a private
or a commercial ambulance that that's in this system here.
We you know, we managed to learn the hard way

(01:01:58):
that you ended up wanting to keep E m S
as a somewhat separate function because the coal volume alone,
you know, you can't go and do you know three
thousand calls a day with the firehouse doing all the runs.

(01:02:18):
I think that that accommodated a lot of the changes
that they built into the system. You know. The merger
also started to bring US members on the fire side
who were former e m S members, who were you know,
who would interact with, who knew what we were doing.

(01:02:40):
And when they get back to the firehouse, they talk
differently and they that listened to differently than if we
did it. Sometimes, yeah, it's.

Speaker 2 (01:02:50):
Good, there's there's you know, like I said, good, there's
bad with everything. But I like that you brought them
to because there's a lot of guys and gals that
some just want to do EMS, and hey, no problem
with that. If you don't want to do fire, you
don't have to do fire. That's fine. But there are
some people that want to eventually make the jump over
FD and y e MS for you know, some people
look at this negatively.

Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
It's a stepping stone job. Now it's generally viewed if
you want to get into the new York City Fire Department.
It's generally viewed as a stepping stone job, an opportunity
to cut your teeth in the street, learn how to
work calls first, and then eventually, hopefully, if you get called,
go to the FDOI as a firefighter.

Speaker 3 (01:03:25):
The system that resulted, unfortunately, brought both the good and
the bad. If they had started moving away from using
us as a recruiting tool and as a staffing method
with a number of our senior people going over there

(01:03:46):
each year, and if they had left it the old way,
where you know, we would lose maybe ten people a
year to fire to police. You know that was fine,
you know, because I know a lot of people had
that passion. You know, they wanted the ultimate job, and
they only took ems's like the learning curve to get
into a little bit. But I mean, now you've got

(01:04:07):
wholesale stealing of all of our seasoned people, and that's bad,
right Well, it disturbs me a lot when you no
longer have anyone in the more than five years of
seniority in the system because you're never learning to you're
never being able to teach the new generation anything worthwhile.
You know, you don't have it down at the five

(01:04:29):
year mark and then you're gone. So that has to change,
it really does.

Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
It's a problem too a little bit with the PD
and the FD kind of a different bombing. But when
people want to go from PD to FD, you know,
it wasn't until you know, because you kept the same
pay gray that you were at a PD when you
lateraled over. It wasn't until they changed that that guys,
you didn't see as much laterals from PD to FD.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
So maybe it's I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
Know, maybe something similar incorporated in TMS. I know that's
come up between both unions, so see where that goes.

Speaker 4 (01:04:59):
Data.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
Who is good to see in the chat?

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
My friend Dave Alawski for those of you in the audience,
as one of my colleagues in the West Date Fire Departments,
a firefighter paramedic and you and I got to do
a shift together.

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
Buddy at Five's one of.

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
These days he's asking me a Facebook can see at
my friend's list, Mike, I gotta know, does Mark have
a favorite EMS movie or TV show? How impactful was
bringing out the dead for EMS in New York City?

Speaker 5 (01:05:21):
Thanks, I'm gonna tell you this, and I'm gonna be
totally honest, I have been very, very disappointed with most
of the movies about us that have been produced.

Speaker 3 (01:05:36):
One of my son is in the film business, and
as he was going through the masters program at at
the University of Southern California and we were paying for
a part of it, the promise that he made to
me was that he was going to finally produce something
that I'm gonna be proud of. Now, don't get me wrong,

(01:05:58):
I love Mother Jugs Speed. Obviously my nickname came off
of that because we had a threesome that was Mother
Jugs and Speed at Corney Island. I saw bringing out
the dead, and as different as I thought it was
and unique, I said, if I ever worked with a

(01:06:21):
partner like that, he would never be going home at night.
They would find his body somewhere. O. I have not
ever worked with anyone even close to the emotional problems
that are portrayed in most of these movies. I have
managed to have the cream of the crop in partners

(01:06:45):
for my entire career, and I am very thankful for it,
and it's one of the reasons that I've lasted. So no,
all right, there's another movie that's coming out now. I understand,
and I've seen a little trailer for that and I go, no.
We said I don't have to waste some money going, so.

Speaker 1 (01:07:04):
I don't blame it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:05):
It's very hard for them to get it right, you know,
even the cop movies and the Fire Department, there's movies
or TV shows, very few of them actually come close to.

Speaker 1 (01:07:13):
The real thing.

Speaker 2 (01:07:15):
And by the way, Dave Adam mentions, because I mentioned
I wanted to do a shift up at fives on
a shift, Adam mentions, it's not. It doesn't count unless
you're up there. So the next time I go up
to five on a ship, you better be there, my friend.
And good to see it in the chat as always.
And hello to Andy mccrack and I missed you earlier.
Good to see it in the chat as well. Glad
that you're watching tonight. Mark Peck's our guest for volume
seventy of the Best and the Bravest Interviews with the

(01:07:36):
Ft and Wives.

Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
The lead.

Speaker 2 (01:07:37):
Now, before we continue anything, we had a couple of
pictures here that we haven't really shown yet except for
Medic three eighty five early. We'll go through them and
get the context behind them. Just for hahas here and
paint the history. So whichever one you want to pull up,
Producer Victor, go right ahead and we'll start with this one.

Speaker 1 (01:07:50):
Give us the backstory.

Speaker 3 (01:07:53):
Okay. I ended up getting involved in MS history and
that has become probably my primary hobby at this point,
other than my dog. We had one of our station
members he came in one day, one of our amts
and he found this photo of a horse drawn Coney

(01:08:16):
Island ambulance goes back to the eighteen hundreds, right, And
I started looking at that, and I started thinking, if
this is out there, there's got to be more. And
for the next couple of years, I actively started looking.
I went down to the Brooklyn the main Brooklyn Public Library,

(01:08:39):
using their microfilm system and looking up stuff. You know.
I started to get in with the people that had
our museum, which was still very young at our training
Academy and looking at what they did, and I just
started following this and I just kept growing and growing
and growing more, and finally I had enough material to

(01:09:03):
put together to build a history display in our crew
lounge at Cone of the history of the hospital and
of EMS in Brooklyn. Developed my own website on that
and it's still up there. And I just kept going
from there and I've been doing it ever since. I
still am associated with the New York City EMS Museum.

(01:09:26):
I've developed a lot of leads for them, gotten a
lot of equipment that I've discovered on things like eBay
and people that I've known, and we even found an
old Corne Island an ambulance sign, probably from the thirties,
which took me sixteen years to acquire for them. So
this has become my second love. So with that, as

(01:09:49):
my retirement was approaching, I decided I'm going to take
all of this material put it together in a book
for the hospital and for the station, so that all
this stuff that I've managed to research doesn't die with me.
So this was a timeline. This was part of the
book that I wrote of major events for the hospital,

(01:10:11):
and it essentially tracks our status as we went from
horses to the red and white.

Speaker 1 (01:10:20):
Yeah, all the way in the beginning of eighteen seventy three.

Speaker 2 (01:10:22):
Ultimately, as we've been talking about for the last few minutes,
on March seventeenth of nineteen ninety six, what other pictures
that we got here?

Speaker 3 (01:10:31):
Okay, that was the cover for it, and that's the
sign that I'm talking about. That sign came to my
attention through the administration of Coney Island Hospital. They had
someone who got to sent them a letter. Who has
that sign? It seems that he was a firefighter I

(01:10:51):
think back then at a station that used to be
down by North Brooklyn, by the Brooklyn Bridge area. Yeah,
what's the area that they rebuilt over? It took it
all the way. Well anyway, they demolished the station and
he found this in the station. So he wrote to
Coney Island, Uh, do you have any pictures of an

(01:11:12):
ambulance this might have come from? So they handed it
to me and I started researching it and I didn't
have an exact match, but that style of sign was
used on both the horse drawn and the early gas ambulances.
So it took him a number of contacts going on

(01:11:33):
into following his death before I finally got them to
agree to give that sign. And it's in the EMS
Museum now.

Speaker 1 (01:11:42):
So was it Dumbo?

Speaker 4 (01:11:45):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (01:11:45):
Not Dumbo. Oh, I'm just trying to.

Speaker 1 (01:11:47):
Think, howbody chat? Probably you No, it.

Speaker 3 (01:11:51):
Will come to me afterwards. Okay, that's the first generation. No,
that's the second generation of the display An eight. So
you've got articles of Brooklyn Eagle tracking how the hospital
was initially built in nineteen ten, what the vehicles there
looked like, and then what the ambulances looked like, going

(01:12:13):
from the horse drawn up to the bread boxes, the metros,
and then finally ending with I think that was my
ambulance at Coney Island in seventy let's see ninety ninety eight,
probably around to that.

Speaker 1 (01:12:33):
Ambulance looks like it. Yeah, I see that.

Speaker 3 (01:12:36):
Yeah, that's version of it. Yep, less material, a different
mounting system. But people appreciate it, so.

Speaker 1 (01:12:48):
Why wouldn't they.

Speaker 2 (01:12:48):
Yeah, it paints the picture of how we got the
current chapter as a history buff.

Speaker 1 (01:12:52):
I love it. Then now we got this.

Speaker 3 (01:12:54):
One, okay that got me into the Facebook days I
finally put together. They're a profile photo of the first
photo of me in EMS and the last photo of
me for my very last shift. I wore the old uniform,
the old shield, and nobody said boo to me about

(01:13:17):
this is a problem. And I went out there and
I did my night's shift and it was unusually quiet
as well, so I got to say goodbyteb a lot
of people around the hospital that I knew, But yeah,
a little wait Okay, this is the last incarnation of
it where we have even more material the book, and

(01:13:39):
just before I retired, and the gentleman to my right
is one of the carpenters at the hospital who was
there for a long time, who I found that also
shared an interest in the history of the hospital, so
he gave me some of the material he had, and
I instead presented him with a book of all of

(01:14:02):
it put together. He's not retired, I understand, and I
think living in Florida. But yeah, he even had a
brick that he gave me of when they tore down
one of the buildings that I had been part of.
And it's just the progress in the hospital. You know,
the older ambulance station that I didn't even know was

(01:14:25):
the old ambulance station. It was a methadone clinic at
the time that I was beginning at Coney Island stood
next door to it. And it wasn't until we found
a photo of these nineteen forty ambulances that we realized
that was the first station they built. So who knew.

Speaker 2 (01:14:46):
Absolutely, I love those connectors there. When you said this over,
I audibly left, this was this was a great one.

Speaker 1 (01:14:52):
You got the story by this one.

Speaker 3 (01:14:54):
Yes, all right, Yeah, one of my partners, one of
his family members, brought this to an artist and they
decided to do me as the dinosaur Medic, as the
true dinosaur Medic. During my last years, I was the
most senior and title and paramedic title. So it resulted

(01:15:17):
in me not only getting the very first FDNY shield
when they issued them, but it got me this as well.
So they took all the joking of the dynomedic and
there I was reported hit my shift.

Speaker 1 (01:15:32):
That was that was the best of all right there.

Speaker 2 (01:15:34):
And then of course that is one of the early
ambulances after the merger in front of truck four and
fifty four engine in Midtown. It hatt never missed a
performance as to model of that station.

Speaker 3 (01:15:45):
Yeah vehicles where they took the orange stripe away and
just painted it over.

Speaker 1 (01:15:51):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:15:51):
Essentially, it was the same thing they did with the
transit police and housing police cards. It just kind of
transit was easier because the color SCHI was already blue.

Speaker 3 (01:15:59):
Yeah. I don't blame them at all. I mean, you know,
these were but still had life left.

Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
In man use them for as long as he could
late nineties.

Speaker 3 (01:16:08):
It took a little bit of attitude adjustment to get
used to the merger, particularly because of all the problems
that went with the early days. It's not what it
was when I left. Yeah, I think people were much
more in tune with it by that point.

Speaker 1 (01:16:26):
Oh yeah, it makes sense.

Speaker 2 (01:16:27):
Even my grand ads and my grand finished his career
in the New York City Police Department. As we'll talk
about when he comes on the show next month, which
he mentions, NYPD would have been a giant mistake for
pre hospital care because the NYPD was worse than health
hospital care.

Speaker 1 (01:16:39):
And I'm not listening.

Speaker 2 (01:16:40):
If there's ever a show that's that loves the NYPD,
it's the Mikey new Avin podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:16:45):
We probably would have had similar growing pains at that point. Yeah. Well,
at least we had emergency service and their experience, and
that practices as a joining.

Speaker 2 (01:16:56):
Point for us, right, because most of the guys in
emergency service will all the guys that would be correct,
All the guys in an emergency service are trained as EMTs.
Some of the guys in the SU are also medics,
so you know, if they go on the call, you're
going to get someone trained to your level, if not
slightly higher. It's more so the guys in galls and
r MPs rather that are going around on patrol. Some

(01:17:18):
of them may be training that regardles some of those
guys and gals that come from MS as well, you know,
But it's hit and miss.

Speaker 1 (01:17:23):
You may get that when an r and P rolls
up by a medical you may not.

Speaker 3 (01:17:27):
So it really depends, but definitely at the station level.
I mean, you know, in the early years, we used
to sign out police radios, the early years of the
medic purse. That's where it finally got started with the
idea because the Jacoby Medics were the first to do it,
and they had an amazing relationship with the cops up
in the four or five where they would actually be
called for events or jobs outside of that one precinct,

(01:17:49):
you know, they were they were available for anywhere in
the city at some point for MCIs. But you know,
they they they started us with that and it helped
because with the dispatch problems of the MS in the
early years and the delays, you know, we could hear
the job go over on PD and be on our
way to a cardiac five to ten minutes easily before

(01:18:13):
MS dispatch the job Eventually that started to improve a
lot where they didn't have that time lag. And I
don't know if it was embarrassment that caused them to
do it or finally they started listening to their own
dispatches and programming the computers the way that they did.
You know, the early computer programs were not as a

(01:18:33):
student as they are these days.

Speaker 2 (01:18:37):
Some things changed with time, and something has changed for
the better. In regards to what was mentioned earlier about
where they rebuilt mich Start, is it mentioned? Is it
next to FOURT Green where they rebuilt Demolaster station rebuilt it.

Speaker 3 (01:18:51):
Two forty No, the actually the Cumberland Station is still there,
although it's in a different part of the hospital. Ah
Woodhall Woodhull was was a new, a new hospital. Yeah,
so that was that was still being built when I
worked up there.

Speaker 1 (01:19:10):
So gotcha.

Speaker 2 (01:19:12):
I didn't want to move ahead a little bit because
you know, get to two thousand, twenty five years, two
thousand and one, nine eleven happens changes a lot for
FD and ye at Mess and then you continue on
until two thousand and five. Now, I wanted to ask
because certain guys are like this, and there's nothing wrong
with it. They want to get to the round number. Well,
I want to get to twenty years. I want to
get to twenty five, thirty, thirty five, forty, and so

(01:19:34):
on and so forth.

Speaker 1 (01:19:35):
Was when you retire to No. Five?

Speaker 2 (01:19:37):
Were you one of those guys, you know, hey, let
me do thirty and then I'll leave, or what was
it that made you say no by that time to go?

Speaker 3 (01:19:43):
I had a lot of contact with people that were
retiring over my earlier years, and there wasn't a system
for it. There wasn't anything that told me this is
this is the way you got to do a kid.
You know, everyone went for a different reason. For me,
you know, I wasn't sure how long I was going
to stay in New York at all, and September eleventh

(01:20:05):
was the deciding factor, not for me, but for my wife.
She was working in Jersey at that point and I
was at Coney Island and she'd have to do that
commune over the bridge. Now, if you remember, in the
early days post nine to eleven, they would have daily
terror alerts, closing of the bridges and stuff, and she

(01:20:30):
would get stuck sometimes not being able to get back
to Staten Island to pick up the kids from school.
If there was a problem. So after a while, you know,
she finally started looking at it and she goes, Listen,
you've got the years in at this point because with
the new pension that came about, with the twenty five
and half pension, I was at thirty year mark. So

(01:20:53):
I mean, I could I could earn more, I could
stay if I wanted to. But she really wanted to
get out of New York. And it's probably the first
argument that she ever really won of this magnitude. So
that's what caused me to retire. And you know, I
still didn't retire retire. I ended up working in Charlotte,

(01:21:15):
North Carolina for another ten years and earning a second
tension because I still had it in me. I still
enjoyed the work. I still physically could do it. Yeah,
and you know, they thought I was a valuable commodity
with the experience, so absolutely I stayed.

Speaker 1 (01:21:32):
Yeah, you did it for a decade with Macklenburg MS,
and then of course you went over to the Piedmont
Medical Center for a few years as well.

Speaker 2 (01:21:39):
Get doing what you love to do, and I mean,
I imagine now it's never going to be really out
of your system, especially still being a historian. But as
far as being out in the field, I imagine that
after sixteen years down in the Carolina's and obviously the
thirty years in New York, that's forty six years combining
the two. So I think it's out of your system.
I now work in the ambulance.

Speaker 3 (01:21:58):
No, it's not out of my system. Was physically a reality.
You know. I've had a number of back injuries over
the years, and you know, I would get through the
acute phase of it and I was fine to go,
you know, another five years right at the point now
where you know, I think that I've injured my back
more by sitting around than not. You know, because when

(01:22:21):
I left Piedmont, and that was only part time, I
had whittled it down to only doing a couple of
days a week. Yeah, after sitting around doing this, my
back finally said, you don't have three mile hikes in
you anymore. It's time. So here I am. But mentally,

(01:22:42):
you know, it kept me sharp, it really did, you know.
I mean I had an advantage going into those later
careers that a lot of people didn't have.

Speaker 2 (01:22:52):
Absolutely, Absolutely, it's a great thing to be a part
of it. You were certainly a long time part of it,
and any with Crackabad it's not out of your system
your DNA, and Jared Hammond also adds it's in your blood.

Speaker 1 (01:23:03):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:23:03):
It's a blood never leads you, never leads you. For
those of you watching on YouTube, you're seeing a rare
appearance on camera by our co producer Jack's aka Morty,
who I referred to as such because he looks like
mort from Madagascar. So for those of you wondering who
is that, that's my lovely dog nephew who's crashing the podcast.
Good evening to you, sir, Like I said, co producer

(01:23:24):
there alongside producer Victor. So this has been a heck
of a conversation. I really do appreciate your time and
again thanks to all you and the audience tonight. Very
active chat between Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube as always, which
I appreciate. So the Rabbi fires you know by now
from watching the show. Five hit run questions for me,
five hit run answers from you. The first one is

(01:23:44):
you weren't in the station a lot because not with
that call on you, but nevertheless out on the road
or even post shift, favorite place to stop for a
m d eat in the city.

Speaker 3 (01:23:54):
Okay, we had a number of places we made eating
an art. Our ship would usually start with pizza, probably
at VNS Pizza down on Emmons Avenue, or if we
were closer to Spamoni Gardens, and then we would be planning, well,
what's to go after that? If I were working with
Bill Gentens, my long term partner, one of my long

(01:24:16):
term partners who I was with for twenty one years,
he liked to stop by and pick up bakery cookies
to bring back to the nurses, So that was always
a stop on a lot of shifts. And then of
course when it was time for dinner, we had all
of the choices, and you know, the primary among them
were places like Brennan and Carr, Spamoni Gardens, we had

(01:24:41):
our favorite Chinese New Times not far from the hospital,
and we were known quite well by all of these
And it was nice because if you got a call
in the middle, you knew your food would either be
packed for you really fast or it would be waiting
for you when you come back later. You have to

(01:25:02):
have to make food your priority where you can.

Speaker 2 (01:25:06):
Yeah, I've learned that eat eat, you know, snack, snacks,
snack as well, especially if you're working at twenty four
second question of the rabbid fire most unforgettable call.

Speaker 1 (01:25:16):
It could be an uplifting call, doesn't necessarily have to
be a bat.

Speaker 3 (01:25:18):
I'm going to give you two. I'm going to try
and give you a couple of quick ones. All right,
Very very early, I think it was nineteen seventy eight,
and we were we had just begun the paramedic program
at Coney Island that summer, on my second cardiac arrest
where we got a return of pulses. We got a

(01:25:41):
return of pulses on a beach call. On arrival. The
patient was out on the sand. The lifeguards had him
in a vehicle, and we're bringing him up to the boardwalk,
the boardwalk. We now got him from the boardwalk to
our ambulance park right at the base of the boardwalk,
and we started working this guy. And we were working

(01:26:02):
him in the street because it had much more room
to start and arrest, and you don't want to waste
the time of putting him in the truck and all that.
At this point, and we're looking over and the top
of the boardwalk is just crowded with people. Now the
interesting part was I was working with Davin McGloin, who

(01:26:23):
was from my class, who I knew and a good
part of my early years, and he asked if he
could bring one of his friends over, Mitch Stern, to
ride as an observer. Mitch was an observer on that call,
and he managed to see us get an applause from
all these people up there when I said we've got

(01:26:45):
a pulse. So that was one that'll always stick in
my memory. That was the second, and I started keeping
track of calls like that afterwards. The second one was
much much later. As you know, mandatory overtime became a
big part of staffing in the later fire years, and

(01:27:09):
we were mandated for another shift that was working with
Bill Genttens. So again this is two very senior people,
all right. We had two cardiac arrests in our normal shift.
We were at the er just finishing up a call,
and we hear a call across the street from the
hospital for another cardiac arrest. We volunteer for the job.

(01:27:32):
We're literally two minutes away up the elevator. It's just
the two of us. We start CPR by ourselves. We're
waiting for our BLS backup. Maybe five or six minutes later,
it's not thirty one David our backup, but it's Chief McCracken,
who has been patrolling the streets at night, and his

(01:27:55):
aide is one of my former partners, Pauline. They are
now doing CPR. We get this guy back and the
BLS and for ourves and now we're switching off with
them and managing to get a little more done. This
guy was in in and out of a factory v
FIB about eight times. We'd get him, we'd lose him,

(01:28:16):
we'd get him, we'd lose him. We start packaging him
for transport. We've got him, he goes back out, and
after doing this about eight times, we finally decided we're
on the last drug that we can give him. All right,
we're going to transport him. We're not going to give
up on this guy. He still has something in him
that wants to get out. So we put him in

(01:28:37):
the ambulance after having to stand him up in the
elevator because we were I think on the sixth of
the eighth floor. Get him down there. He's got the
last drug that we can give that will counteract VTAX.
Still hasn't start out to transport across the street and
as I'm pulling into the ambulance bay, They'll goes, he's

(01:28:57):
got a pulse again. All right. He managed to maintain
the pulse with the Maxell fate and he went on
to be a twenty year survivor. All right. Ems began
a practice a little after that of we called it
the Second Chance Breakfast, where they would bring arrest survivors

(01:29:20):
together with the cruise the physician who was medical control
that night, and I got to meet his family at
this particular first Saves and breakfast, and he stayed around.
We stayed in touch, all we emailed each other. He

(01:29:42):
would contact me on what he called his rebirthday. He
outlived his wife, who ultimately passed away, and I got
to meet his kids, who his brand kids never would
have known had it not been for us. So you
look at that, and to me, that's been I still

(01:30:03):
get emotional with it. But this is why we're in
the business we're doing all right. We've got three generations
that never would have known this guy had we not
been there that night, had all of us not been
there that night. And you can't do better than that.
So he made us work for our money, and I,

(01:30:24):
like I said, we stayed in touch. So he did
very well. And that's what I got to tell you
about the memorable calls.

Speaker 2 (01:30:34):
That's that's one of the better ones I've heard, and
that's the highlight of the show right there. I love
that and cracket ads via Facebook. See if I can
find the comment here there it is because I'll never
forget the cops. Comment said, they'll never see that at
our job, A three star chief doing CPR.

Speaker 3 (01:30:50):
Well, I knew Anthy McCracken since we were in communications together,
so it was not you know, I never feared number one.
I never feared any of the chiefs, but some of
them were a little more on tended there With him,
we had a very good relationship and I got to
do a lot of things in equipment and in training
because of him. He was a very good addition to

(01:31:14):
Chief of the MS.

Speaker 2 (01:31:15):
I gotta tell you, well, Chief of Kracken, you should
come on the show. He made enough appearances in the
check which I'm grateful for because you've had it some
nuggets that are really cool to see that you should
come on down as well and we'll feature you for
the best of the ravest My friend, so hopefully.

Speaker 3 (01:31:31):
Never would have gotten down on their knees, and he
was down there before I said anything.

Speaker 2 (01:31:35):
Now, listen, you respect that guys that never forget where
they came from and get right there, right in the
trenches and go to work. You know approxications as well,
you know cross FDPD and EMS. If you got a
boss like that, he'll never go wrong. Third question, the
rapid fire funniest moment during your E. M. S. Year's
Coney Island FD and Y or NYC or otherwise.

Speaker 3 (01:31:57):
Okay, this is gonna be a little bit on the
bizarre side. That's but if you have to make a
title for this episode, it would be Penis and a Jar. Okay,
all right. So one of the things that I was doing,
one of our chiefs, Gus Pappus, I had known also
from my days in communication, and Gus ended up going

(01:32:19):
on through all the years and being the training chief
and stuff at the academy. But we stayed in touch,
and he always wanted to go out and do more
ride time. Well, he had to do it undercover because
the administration would not let him go ride on medic
cruise because of the inherent risks of him getting involved

(01:32:43):
in something that was untoured, but he trusted us enough.
He knew he knew me for a long time, so
he would go undercover and ride with us as an
observer and as a participant if he wanted. So we
get one call for came across was a castration. So

(01:33:04):
I'm working with my partner, Debbie c Anciato, who incidentally
is the Jugs of the Mother Drugs and Speed trilogy.
A very easy on the eyes young lady, but a
fantastic partner, and her husband also happened to be a firefighter,
all right, So Gussin and him are at the door.

(01:33:28):
I'm laying back a little bit. The door opens up
and there's this guy wearing a white robe with a
blood splotch on his crotch. We go into the room
and we're trying to figure out what happened, and his
story was he wanted to be made a female. The

(01:33:49):
doctors wouldn't do it for him. I did it myself.
He cut off his member, so now luckily he was
still bleeding, but he was control. So I left Gus
and Debbie to take care of the initial evaluation. He
obviously had mentations, so you know, we weren't too worried

(01:34:10):
about that, and I went on the search for the
missing member. He says it's in the other room, in
a black bag. And I go to this room and
it's like I just entered the twilight zone. There's no lights.
There are wires strung across the ceiling from one to
the other to the other to the I'm working a

(01:34:33):
flashlight and I'm looking for this bag, and this general
obviously had some serious emotional history. I find the bag.
I opened it up, just on the off chance they
can do something with this, and there it is the
penis and the jar. So I bring it back and
we transported with him. But yeah, it had been too

(01:34:54):
long and not something they could give him back. So
Penis in the jar.

Speaker 1 (01:35:01):
Well, yeah, yeah, a good thing.

Speaker 2 (01:35:06):
A title is episode is Best and the Bravest, because
I'm not sure YouTube proved that one.

Speaker 1 (01:35:11):
Nevertheless, he did.

Speaker 3 (01:35:14):
He was a very good survivor, though he did not
pass because I don't know the rest of the story.

Speaker 2 (01:35:20):
But well, at least he made it through the night. Yeah,
he did your part for sure. Yeah, well, he well
he lost his part, but that's a different story for
a different day. The fourth question of the rabid Fire
most meaningful teaching moment or student success story.

Speaker 1 (01:35:34):
We talked about about that earlier. You can expand out here.

Speaker 3 (01:35:37):
Okay, I mean that was that was a good one. Uh,
But I think that it didn't really start to hit
me until I started to see so many of the
people that I precepted graduating. You know, I was involved in,
uh some of the training up at Jacoby right after
we graduated, so there were people in that class that
I knew, and it just went on and on. But

(01:36:00):
the point where it really became a parent people that
I never even remembered that rode on my bus during
their you know, the initial precept period doing their field rotations.
The number of thank yous I got when I retired
on Facebook was immense. And that's where I realized I
really impacted a lot more people than I ever thought
I did, because some of these are really the stars

(01:36:21):
of the system. And I thought that made me feel
really good.

Speaker 1 (01:36:26):
As it should, Yeah, yeah, that should.

Speaker 2 (01:36:31):
And the last question rapid Fire one PC advice for
today's paramedics and EMS leaders.

Speaker 3 (01:36:38):
Okay, I'm going to give you two things, the first
of which is get in tight with your partners. Your
partners make or break the job, all right, And if
you work with someone that you really mesh well with,
try not to leave him. One of my partners, Gettings,

(01:37:01):
was with me for twenty one years, all right, and
it was at the point, I mean, you know, we
were the senior team in the city from when I'm told,
but you know, we didn't have to ask each other
what do you want to do? What do the other
woman do? But it was also good for the students
that we had because on every day that they came
in during their first six months, they had a senior

(01:37:22):
guy who could teach them. So my advice is you've
got to find the mentors that you want and they
make the best of them. And the other thing that
I would also tell you is what also paid for me,
all right, don't show your first respondence. They are also
a very valuable commodity. And like I said, when I

(01:37:45):
you know, in the early days of Cony, I had
the captain who'd come up to me and said, whatever
you need, just tell me. You know, we're not going
to do this for the other guys, but you know,
you always do the right thing, and that carried over
to my years and Shaw we used to be based
in their firehouse, so we would go through, you know,
multiple firehouses, and they were our first responders. There was

(01:38:06):
no BLS to call. If you had a cardiac arrest,
they were it. And if you needed help in transporting,
you have to take a firefighter with you. And I
made a point of it every you know, even as
being an elder person during these years, you know, the
young guys or the rookies in the company would be
assigned to go carry our equipment. And I said, okay,
that's fine, but I never leave the scene without me

(01:38:28):
carrying something or going empty handed. If you're carrying my equipment,
all right. You know, I appreciate your assistance, but you're
not here to do my job, all right. You're here
to help me, and I'm here to help you. And
that's the kind of attitude you've got to form between
the people that you work with. And it's probably there
a lot more, you know. I know, these these new
guys interact on a lot more of their first responders.

(01:38:53):
So that's my best, my best advice to.

Speaker 1 (01:38:56):
You, and it's good advice, and I appreciate it. This
is has been fantastic.

Speaker 2 (01:39:01):
I thought this would be very good and I was
not disappointed, but don't sign off yet. We'll talk off
the year before I say goodbye to the audience, a
lot of which features familiar faces for you, and any
shout outs Toandy one or anything you'd like to give.

Speaker 3 (01:39:15):
I don't know. Davin, Davin mcgourin, all right. He left
New York City EMS long before the fire years, Fire
Department merging years, and we've managed to get back together again.
He has been working at Presbyterians Hospital System since then,
and he has finally surpassed me in who is the

(01:39:39):
senior paramedic in the city of New York. He still
is out there doing his thing, and everyone that I
talked to, he is still doing what I should be
doing today, all right, being agmented to others. And I
gotta tell you, Davin, I was so glad to see
you at Simonia Gardens.

Speaker 1 (01:40:00):
So shout out to David. You know, records are made
to be broken, Mark. You know, you couldn't hold the
title forever. Somebody had to break that record eventually, No,
but eventually eventually.

Speaker 3 (01:40:11):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:40:11):
It did stick it for a while though, which is
nice and the testament to the career that you had.
Like I said this, was very fun and I appreciate
you making the time stick around. We'll talk off the
air and shout out as always to everybody in the
chat that tuned in Rady tuned in via LinkedIn, rather
you tuned in via Facebook or Rady tuned in via YouTube,
and obviously, as always those you, we're gonna listen to
this later on the audio side wherever it is, and

(01:40:32):
you get your podcast Apple, Spotify, so on and so forth.

Speaker 1 (01:40:35):
Coming up next to the Mic to Waving podcast. He
was an.

Speaker 2 (01:40:38):
NYPD lieutenant who, upon his retirement, has ventured into the
world of podcasting himself, and that is John McCary, who
had a distinguished close to twenty year career with the
Nypdame and now it's one half of the Finest and
Filter podcast. We previously had his partner on the show,
Eric dim on the show a while ago, so now
we'll get John on. Looking forward to that and next Friday.

(01:40:59):
She was a CIA intelligence analyst during the height of
the CIA's War on Terror in the nineties and some
interesting world developments that were happening then. Is specifically in
that role from nineteen ninety one until two thousand and two,
and she'll join me to talk about it. That's Kim
Woodward so very much looking forward to those two shows
on tap as we get back into the law enforcement
side here on the Mikey Doable Podcast. Thanks as always
for those of you tuning in for those of you

(01:41:21):
listening on the audio side for tonight's outro song from
their nineteen ninety one album Bad motor Finger Soundgard comes
your way with room one thousand years wide.

Speaker 1 (01:41:29):
In the meantime on behalf.

Speaker 2 (01:41:31):
Of Mark Peck and producer Victor and of course Jackson
made a special guest appearance tonight, my dog nephew of
course Michael.

Speaker 4 (01:41:37):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (01:41:37):
This has been volume seventy the best bravest interviews with
the Ft and y Zelite and we will see you
next time.

Speaker 1 (01:41:42):
Take care, have a great weekend.

Speaker 6 (01:42:09):
It's a year us so.

Speaker 4 (01:42:15):
Well go hear while other lie.

Speaker 6 (01:42:23):
My costs a walk a thousand.

Speaker 4 (01:42:26):
Years years so years time.

Speaker 6 (01:43:00):
SEZs Dell mears.

Speaker 3 (01:43:03):
A walk.

Speaker 4 (01:43:07):
One you love, one.

Speaker 6 (01:43:09):
Of the nine he lives. These years they come along
with all these years cannot be come. Come to my rod, come.

Speaker 4 (01:43:36):
A thousand wars, a thousand sizes, boss of thousan.

Speaker 6 (01:43:57):
Years way, A welcome uncle someone always some afraid

Speaker 4 (01:44:17):
To Rod, to have s

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Episode 359: The Best of The Bravest: Paramedic Mark Peck (Volume 70)

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