East Windsor honors EMTs of the year
By:Michael Arges
EAST WINDSOR — An infectious enthusiasm for helping others characterizes both winners of the East Windsor 1999 EMT of the Year award: Scott Koplowitz, representing Rescue Squad II, and Michael Quinn, representing Rescue Squad I.
The awards were presented Tuesday during the East Windsor Township Council meeting.
“My goal on a lot of calls is make a stressful situation more easy to deal with by trying to make the patient smile,” Mr. Koplowitz said. Whenever the situation is appropriate, he said, “I’m the one trying to crack a joke” to help the patient feel less anxious.
When carrying someone downstairs, for example, he may assure a patient that she is safe because, “we never really drop anyone unless we don’t like them.”
Rita Teubner, the president of Rescue Squad II, insists that it is impossible to over-emphasize the importance of Mr. Koplowitz’s positive and encouraging attitude. She notes that “people don’t call you when they’re having a good day.”
Mr. Koplowitz, 22, said of EMT service that “I fell in love with it immediately, and ever since then I’ve become more and more attached to it and more and more involved.” The service is so fulfilling that “it doesn’t seem like a chore to me,” he added.
He joined the squad as a cadet at age 16, took his EMT training and became an active member at 18. Even as a student at the University of Delaware, he would come home on weekends and holidays and ride on emergency calls.
Ms. Teubner recalled that he came home from college one Thanksgiving and saved a man’s life that evening. Mr. Koplowitz added that he had the special privilege of shaking that man’s hand a few months ago.
“That’s really, really rewarding,” he said, “because he’s one of the few people who walk away from a cardiac arrest, and he’s very healthy right now, he’s walking around and enjoying life.”
Ms. Teubner praises Mr. Koplowitz’s “wonderful first-aid skills” and “his compassion and caring for all our patients.” He is currently Deputy Chief of the squad.
The squad is “constantly” looking for new volunteers, Mr. Koplowitz said. He added that “most of us join without any prior first aid experience, and we’re a very supportive group, and we’re here to have fun and to get the job done.”
Although Mr. Koplowitz commutes to New York for his job in marketing, he is still able to ride with the rescue squad at night and on weekends.
Michael Quinn, 20, also finds a compelling sense of fulfillment in EMT service.
“It is a really good self-reward to know that you’re helping people,” he said. “When you walk up to that cardiac call, and the patient’s really in a lot of distress,” he said, there is a great feeling of satisfaction “if you can do just the slightest thing to make them feel better.”
As Mr. Quinn describes it, that good feeling is almost addictive: “I just found myself riding [on emergency calls] more and more and more. Anytime anyone needed [substitute] coverage, I’d just say, ‘I’ll do it, I’ll do it, no problem.’ I’d always be ready to cover, because I love riding.”
He laughs at the notion that he might find this service becoming boring, saying, “no, I could see myself doing this 15 or 20 years easy.”
The help EMTs provide is personal and emotional as well as medical, Mr. Quinn said: “Sometimes people just need to talk.”
Mr. Quinn got involved in the EMT squad gradually.
“I had a couple of friend since high school who were on the squad,” he recalled, and said that “slowly but surely” he found himself “hanging out” with them at the squad building. Of his decision to join the EMT squad, he said, “I think it was definitely one of the best decisions of my life.”
Mr. Quinn emphasizes that EMT service is a great way to begin for anyone interested in the medical field. He noted that “a lot of members” who just started EMT with no further plans for a medical career “now find themselves in medical school preparing to be doctors, because they find it so interesting.”
Rescue Squad II Chief Robert Manlio noted Mr. Quinn’s dependability and helpfulness as additional outstanding qualities. He has done a lot of work to keep the squad’s equipment in good order and has ridden on more than 700 emergency calls since joining the squad in February 1998. He has used his CPR skills to revive six patients and is certified to employ the defibrillator.
He also is training to become a First Responder, a person who is ready to go straight from their home to the rescue site with important life saving equipment such as the defibrillator.
Mr. Manlio emphasizes that potential volunteers begin helping and training as provisional members at anytime. Training is free, and the introductory course will begin in July and again in September.
Mr. Quinn works part-time as a police dispatcher in West Windsor and hopes to become a full-time dispatcher and then a police officer.