Crews honored for life-saving efforts

By Nicole Montesano

Smoke Signals staff writer

Four more days to live and to say goodbye, were what rapid action by Grand Ronde and other emergency crews bought a local family in late April. Those four days meant everything.

On Monday, June 22, the Grand Ronde Emergency Services Department held a code save ceremony to honor the paramedics, emergency medical technicians, police and dispatchers whose concerted action helped a Grand Ronde family that was already facing tragedy.

The woman had been diagnosed with a fast-moving terminal illness the previous day, when her daughter realized she was experiencing a heart attack and called 911.

Grand Ronde Emergency Services Department Battalion Chief RC Mock told the assembled audience in June that “at that moment, the years of fine-tuning procedures and muscle memory from countless hours of collective training were on display.”

The national standard for getting such a call dispatched, Mock said, is two minutes. Yamhill Communications Agency dispatchers managed it in 47 seconds, obtaining the address, notifying Grand Ronde Emergency Services, the Yamhill County Sheriff’s Office and Grand Ronde Tribal Police, while gathering information and coaching the caller through CPR.

The fire crews were out of the station in 42 seconds, he said, and on site in four-and-a-half minutes. With a heart attack, Mock said, seconds and minutes count. Those rapid actions enabled the woman to leave the hospital after treatment with no resulting cognitive damage. In the following days, he said, the family was able to gather and say their goodbyes.

“That’s why we’re here,” despite the long, arduous hours of training, he said.

The ceremony honored Emergency Services members Operations Chief Jason Crowe; Lt. Bobby Hatch; Firefighter/Paramedic Paige Traywick; Firefighter/Emergency Medical Technician Daniel Loop; Paramedic Hunter Christensen; Firefighter/EMT Daniel Koffler, Firefighter/EMT Treve Earhart and Firefighter/EMT Chesnie Lovelady.

It honored Grand Ronde Tribal Police Officer Bradley Summers; YCOM dispatchers Angie Eichler and Daisha Crickmer and Yamhill County Sheriff’s Office deputies Brenden McKoy, Brett Adamski and Kalim Mercier, who is also a Tribal member.