There's No Rest for Volunteer Paramedic

It's Monday, and paramedic Maevis Solomon is making her first call for the week, to a senior facility in White Bear Lake. The patient has died by the time they arrive, but the crew moves the woman from her chair into bed for the family's arrival.

The stop is one of 18 fire and ambulance calls that Solomon will make this week and one of hundreds she probably will make this year.

Solomon is a volunteer, who like other on-call firefighters is paid only a small fee each time she responds. So what was she doing responding to more than 500 fire and medical calls last year? The next-highest tally at the White Bear Lake Fire Department was in the 200s.

"I've almost made this into a full-time job," Solomon said. "Maybe I'm just the volunteer who went awry."

Solomon, 47, is a stay-at-home mom, which gives her more flexibility than her peers. She answers a larger share of calls on weekdays, when fewer volunteers are available, and more rarely takes calls in the evenings and on weekends so she can be with her family.

The nature of volunteer emergency work means interruptions in her day are the norm.

She said a conversation with a patient might begin, " 'I was just vacuuming, and I'm going to take care of your chest pain now.' There's a bit of a transition."

Other firefighters occasionally tease Solomon about her call volume, but it's all in fun, said Joy Banning, an EMT and department firefighter for eight years.

"I don't think it wears her down. It builds her up. She's in her glory," said Banning, who praised Solomon's teamwork and knowledge.

"I love to be on calls with her. She does her thing and lets you do your thing. I enjoy her intelligence."

Mike Machus, assistant chief at Station No. 2, where Solomon most frequently reports, said the hours she puts in are remarkable for a paid on-call volunteer department. He also said her workload draws some good-natured teasing, but it usually goes like this:

"We hope Maevis never gets a real job."

The chaotic nature of the schedule is a radical change from her last profession -- public accounting. While doing the books for a bike shop in Denver, she met some of the city's bicycle emergency medical staff members, who work large street fairs.

Their chitchat piqued her interest. But even more, she was drawn to their personalities.

"All emergency personnel are neat people," she said.

So she surrendered her life as a bean counter and got a degree as an emergency medical technician. She worked several years for a private ambulance company in Denver before she and her husband, Jim, moved to White Bear Lake five years ago.

She joined the White Bear Lake Fire Department within a year and returned to school to become a paramedic. But real lessons come with experience.

"You almost learn more on the street from your patients than you do in school," she said.

Lesson number one: There is no shortage of "self-inflicted stupidity," she said.

"How many times have you heard, 'Do not put your hand in the snow blower,' " she asked. "And sometimes you want to ask, 'Did you really think that ladder was going to stay there?' "

This winter, she answered two calls in the same day, one from a man whose fingers had been mangled in a snow blower and another from a woodcutter waiting for the ambulance with his finger in a sandwich bag.

Of course, during the call, mum's the word.

"We don't make any comments," she said. "You know it hurts."

The onslaught of preventable injuries can make emergency workers paranoid, but as a mother of two boys, ages 13 and 19, Solomon is circumspect.

Her boys have paint guns and BB guns, and contraptions like potato cannons that make firefighters shudder. (For those without sons, a potato cannon involves PVC pipe, aerosol hair spray, parts from a disposable lighter and a potato.)