For Years, He Has Saved Lives in Rural America. Who Will Take His Place?
The New York Times
Volunteer ambulance squads are running out of volunteers. What happens when Bob VanCoughnett retires?
The emergency radio erupted in a garble of static and a few spare details: possible stroke victim, 14 Grange Avenue.
The dispatcher didn’t mention the patient’s name, and Bob VanCoughnett didn’t need it.
The address told him everything.
“That’s Kevin,” VanCoughnett said to three junior emergency medical technicians standing beside him in an ambulance garage in Adams, a small town in upstate New York. “I’ve known Kevin 30 years. This will be a fun call.”
Anyone who has spent time in an ambulance with VanCoughnett knows that 14 Grange Avenue is never a fun call. Kevin was Kevin Fuller, a 65-year-old man who would be the first to admit that some days he drinks a few too many beers. He lives with his wife, Valarie, in a second-floor apartment around the corner from the ambulance squad headquarters, and together they call 911 several times a month for a constellation of health concerns.
VanCoughnett and the other medical workers climbed into the ambulance, drove for a minute and parked in front of a tattered gray house that stands on a crab-grass hill. It was 3 p.m. on a hot Sunday in July, and VanCoughnett’s face turned red the moment he left the air-conditioned ambulance.
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