Every December the Killingworth Ambulance Association holds its annual Christmas party at the home of a board member, and this year was supposed to be no different.

And it wasn’t. Only, it was, too.

Yes, a board member hosted it. And, yes, EMTs and others on the board were there, as they have been for years. But it was more than a Christmas party. It was also a retirement party for former board member Pat Miller.

Miller announced that she is quitting as an EMT after serving Killingworth the past 15 years – many of which were spent on call Tuesday evenings, with Miller sleeping on an air mattress at the association’s Route 81 headquarters.

“There are a lot of factors,” she said, “that came together that make this the right time.”

One is that she must renew her certification at the end ofthe calendar year. Another is that, since moving to Madison several years ago, it’s become increasingly difficult for her to spend weekday evenings at the KAA building. And, third, she’s more focused on life after retirement from her job as a pharmacist – something she envisions happening within the next two years.

“I feel I’ve done my time,” said Miller. “I’m getting older,and it’s time for newer blood to come along and step up to the plate … Patients are getting larger and larger, and my back is getting older and older. I don’t want to start my retirement with a major back injury.”

But that doesn’t mean that Miller is leaving the KAA or Killingworth. She is not. She intends to continue teaching CPR courses and monitoring ambulance inventory for the association. She simply is retiring as an EMT – unfortunately, at a time when the KAA is in need of volunteers.

“What am I going to miss?” she said. “Certainly the people. People ask if you like what you do as an EMT, and I don’t like seeing people in pain and suffering. But it gives you great satisfaction to know that you might be able to help them on their worst day and make it a little easier on them and their families.

“I’ll miss that because Killingworth is such a big-hearted community. It makes it easy to want to give.”

And Miller has given a considerable amount of her adult life to Killingworth. A member of the KAA’s board of directors for over two decades, she was a past president, vice president and secretary. After moving to Madison, she resigned from the board but continued as an EMT – an experience she said she won’t forget.

Apparently, neither will others.

“When my retirement was announced,” Miller said, “one of the soon-to-be EMTs, someone who’s taking the (current EMT) course, Mary Robbenhaar-Fretz (a board member) came up to me and said, ‘Wow, Pat, you’ve been doing Tuesday nights here for a long time.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I have. But what made you remember that?’ And she said, ‘Because you transported my father on a Tuesday night. And he passed away three-to-four days later. You were such a comfort to us then.’ ”

Miller’s last day as an EMT is Monday, Dec. 31. And while she’s not sure how she will recognize the event she is certain that with a New Year she begins a new life.

“Being an EMT certainly is a meaningful way to give back to your community,” she said, “which I think everyone has an obligation to do in one form or another. Certainly, it has its downsides. Nobody wants to be called out of bed at 2 in the morning. But you do it because you know one of your peers – one of your colleagues, perhaps – needs help.

“Am I glad I did it? I don’t have to think a second about that. It’s an unqualified yes. I have no regrets at all. And I do feel I’ve helped a lot of people over the years, which gives you a great deal of satisfaction. It’s been a wonderful experience.”

By Clark Judge

It’s not just the Killingworth Ambulance Association that needs more EMTs. It’s the people of Killingworth itself.

And I just discovered why.

Were it not for an EMT … in the right place at the right time … I might have lost my 68-year-old brother. He suffered cardiac arrest while working out one morning and, lucky for him … and for all those close to him … there was an EMT there to help save his life.

His name is Adam (he asked that I not use his last name), and he’s not from Killingworth. He lives in Chicago, and it was there … at a downtown athletic club … that he put his training into practice by helping to revive a clinically dead patient – my brother — through CPR and the use of an AED.

It really doesn’t matter where this happened. What matters is that it happened … period.

Adam knew what to do when others did not, and he knew what to do when there was little or no margin for error. Essentially, he knew what to do when a life was in peril because he’d been trained. As a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania he worked as an EMT with the on-campus Medical Emergency Response Team (MERT).

“I was at the gym on the machine directly in front of the patient,” Adam recalled in an e-mail, “doing my normal cardio while watching some Netflix with my earbuds in. Out of nowhere a woman came running up to the front of my machine, so I took my earbuds out. She frantically asked if I worked in health care because I happened to be wearing a T-shirt with the logo of a hospital, (and she) alerted me to the fact that there was a medical emergency directly behind me. I had no idea.”

Adam turned to see three women performing CPR on my brother. One, he said, was applying chest compressions. Another was administering breaths. And the third was monitoring the AED. CPR was undertaken, he said, for approximately 10 minutes before Advanced Life Support arrived to whisk my brother away to nearby Northwestern Hospital.

In those 10 minutes, Adam said, two shocks were advised and administered with the AED. I later learned that my brother’s heart had stopped for four minutes.

“The most important lesson from becoming an EMT,” Adam said, “was to stay calm and follow your training. There were a lot of people, onlookers and drama in the situation to be caught up in, and it was important to follow protocols.”

My brother was unresponsive for two-and-half days but opened his eyes that weekend and was taken off a respirator within 48 hours. His recovery was so immediate, so complete and so remarkable that he was sent home within a week-and-a-half and today contemplates returning to work in January.

All of that was communicated to Adam, who, understandably, was relieved.

“During the incident,” he said, “I was emotionally turned off and focusing on protocol. However, for the rest of the week I was quite shaken from the experience. It’s one thing to be an EMT when you signed up for a shift to be an EMT; it’s another to have a life-threatening emergency come up unexpected in your everyday life.

“I was very lucky to learn the patient made a full recovery (by hearing) through a random connection of a friend-of-a-friend. Otherwise, I would still be left wondering. I’m grateful I spent all that time learning to be an EMT.”

So are we.

What I learned in that week I spent in Chicago and what I gathered afterward underscored the importance of knowing CPR and the critical roles that our volunteers serve when they act as EMTs. In fact, when I returned to Killingworth, I ran into Mike Haaga, who leads EMT classes at the Ambulance Association with his wife, Marguerite, and notified him that my wife and I were interested in taking a CPR course.

I told him it was a voluntary decision, but I know better. It’s not. Adam made me do it.

Knowing what he and others did that morning in Chicago convinced me that maybe, just maybe, I could do the same one day. If nothing else, it would at least serve to prepare me if I ever were faced with a similar situation.

“CPR is incredibly easy,” Adam said. “But the reality is: It’s somewhat of a burden to find the time and the money to go to a CPR class. However, I encourage everyone to find that time.

“I trained to be an EMT so I could work dedicated shifts at my college – responding to 911 calls during my shift. I never anticipated or expected to use my training outside of those set shifts. Odds are that you will never be in a situation where someone goes into cardiac arrest near you, but it is definitely worth taking a CPR class just in case. Because a life can be on the line.”

A life already was.