One-Armed Paramedic Receives The National Star Of Life Award

For some paramedics, winning the Star of Life award would be the achievement of a lifetime. For Bryan Stoker, this year's winner of both the state and national Star of Life award, it is merely a stop in the journey that begins, and hopefully ends, in Alameda's fire department, despite having lost an arm a few years ago in a car accident.

Stoker's aim is to become a member of the Alameda Fire Department, like his father, longtime firefighter Rich Stoker.

"Dad was in the fire service since I was 6 or 7," Stoker said. "When I turned 14 I got involved in the Explorers program."

Alameda firefighter Rick Murray recalls Stoker as "a dry sponge that would swell up around fire service, absorbing anything he could. He was always the last one around. He wouldn't leave until everything was cleaned up."

"I spent 7 or 8 years training with the fire department doing ride-alongs and training," Stoker said. "I became an Explorers post captain when I was 16. At 18 I became an assistant adviser and stayed on until I turned 22."

Stoker learned not only the hands-on fire fighting skills, but leadership and administrative skills, as well. Every summer, he led Explorers to firefighting camps in locations such as Downey, Vallejo and Orange County.

"It was just so exciting," he said. "That's where I met real fire."

Although these summer trips expanded his skills and his horizons, Alameda still was his passion.

"My primary (interest) with Alameda was structure firefighting," Stoker said. "Instead of training you actually got to go into rooms on fire. I thought, 'this is the real deal.' It was under controlled circumstances, of course, but it was a great learning experience."

He joined the Marines as a reservist right out of high school. After his training, he returned to the Explorers on a limited basis and appeared to be on the fast track to fire service recruitment.

But his dream took a dive after a car accident cost him his arm.

"My initial reaction was tremendous sadness," Stoker said.

"It was definitely a questionable period for me. I knew I still wanted to be in the fire service, but I had to put in extra hours to figure out how to do things," Stoker said.

Every seemingly mundane task he had learned during his years with the Explorers was up for grabs. He had to set about mastering them all over again. He credits a long list of firefighters for spending hours in the training facility, helping him relearn and reinvent ways of firefighting.

Murray was one of those men.

"He's got the heart and body of Superman minus one arm," Murray said. "There is nothing he's afraid of. If he encountered a problem, he'd meet it head-on. Even with one arm, he learned those skills again, even better than me."

"We went over every task," Stoker said. "We'd figure out how to raise the ladder and say, 'OK, we got that, now how do we raise the hose?' It was all difficult, but raising extension ladders was especially tough. Normally you do that hand over hand, but I didn't have the other hand. What we finally settled on was pull, lock and regrip. It takes longer, but it gets the job done."

He attended emergency medical technician school and rode along with paramedics in Alameda, learning how to do the job with one arm. He worked for two years as an EMT, while he trained for two years to become a paramedic.

After finishing his training, he began working as a paramedic in 2002 for AMR Ambulance Company. The Star of Life award came as a surprise to both him and his wife of 10 months, Pamela.

"She was ecstatic," Stoker said.

The Star of Life is awarded by the California and American ambulance associations. At the awards ceremony in Sacramento, Stoker learned he had earned the national award as well and soon would be traveling to Washington, D.C.

"We met with Barbara Lee, Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein and got a tour of the White House," Stoker said.