Interview: Las Vegas' First Black Paramedic

Calvin Griffin found his career calling on a whim.

Griffin was working as a professional kickboxer and attending Pasadena City College in California when he spotted a six-credit emergency-medical technicians' class that would fill out his course schedule. During the class, Griffin went on a ride-along with a Los Angeles-area ambulance company and fell in love with the patient interaction.

On a visit to Las Vegas in 1986, Griffin applied for a job with American Medical Response, then Mercy Medical Services. When the company hired him, Griffin became Las Vegas' first black paramedic.

From 1986 until his transfer in 2000 to American Medical Response's Jean outpost near the California state line, Griffin delivered about 45 babies - including his EMT partner's - was a first responder to the 1988 explosion of the Pacific Engineering & Production Company of Nevada plant in Henderson and helped countless Las Vegans negotiate medical traumas both major and minor. In April, he won American Medical Response's EMS (emergency medical services) Responder of the Year honors.

Question: You had an unusual career transition from professional kickboxing to paramedics. What skills did you learn in martial arts that have helped you in medicine?

Answer: When you're a kickboxer, you control yourself better. You can deal with problems a bit better because of your training. You're more disciplined and more focused. Kickboxing gives you an ability to deal with adrenaline.

Question: What kinds of calls do you typically handle at Jean?

Answer: On the weekends, there are medical calls because all the buses come in and everybody is over 55. You've got buses full of 60- to 80-year-olds who will sit all day at a slot machine. They're going to get exhausted, dehydrated and hypoglycemic, because they're not going to eat. On the weekends, we probably have two or three of those calls a day. They're not transports, but we do have to treat them on the scene.

Question: How does your job change during the week?

Answer: That's when we get the trauma calls. (Interstate) 15 between mile marker 10 and Baker, (Calif.), has one of the highest accident rates in the United States. Each crew (at Jean) averages three to four rollovers a week, but some of those are minor, without big injuries.

Question: Why do you like working at the state line?

Answer: I like trauma. In town, you have trauma, but not as much, and you always wonder whether you could handle anything major. You ask yourself, "Can I triage? Can I make a difference?" I like that part of it.

Question: What are the experiences you've never forgotten?

Answer: I delivered a baby and the (mother) quit trying right in the middle of the birth. I delivered the head, but the baby's shoulder was stuck. I was trying to deliver the shoulder, and she said, "OK, that's it."

I said, "What? What's wrong?"

She said, "I quit. I'm not having this baby."

She stood up as we were coming under the Charleston underpass. I'm screaming to my partner, "Pull over! Pull over!" He pulled over under the underpass and jumped in the back. He held her down so I could deliver the shoulder.

One of weirdest calls I had was after we dropped off a patient at Valley Hospital. There was an older security guy outside smoking a cigarette, so I made a comment to him about how smoking would catch up with him.

Maybe four hours later, he's short of breath at his house. I go on the call and give him a breathing treatment.

He told me he just didn't feel right, that he couldn't breathe. So I intubated him and got him to the hospital, and he coded (lost his pulse and respiration). We did cardiopulmonary resuscitation and then we shocked him.

He died anyway, and we left for another call.

We brought back another patient. The nurse pulled me aside and told me the wife came down to see the body, uncovered his face and cried and prayed for 30 minutes. She went to walk away, and her husband grabbed her hand. She screamed, the nurse ran in there, and I'll be damned if he wasn't alive.