Steven Velásquez - Granting "Sirenity"

By Steven P. Velasquez December 12, 2008 EMT Eric Rivera - Rest In Peace Brother When I first got my job at the MC, one of my regular partners was a guy named Eric Rivera. If the MC was a fraternity, Eric would be "legacy" as his older brother Eddie had gone before him.   Eric had a shining personality that would naturally accent a room. He was charming beyond words; just ask any of the ladies! A handsome Latino somewhere in his early 20's, we used to tease him because he had a striking resemblance to Eric Estrada, the actor who played "Ponch" on the hit TV show "CHIPS." That used to drive him crazy, but I digress.   My first Christmas Eve, he and I worked together and there wasn't much going on. Without a place to aim our energy and attention, they turned inward, and so began the sad conversation of where we'd rather be than here. We talked of our families, our traditions, the things we used to do and how much we'd rather be ...

by Steven P. Velasquez April 23, 2008 Once again the common thread that interconnects us all has revealed itself in a most surprising way. One can debate the existence of this "thread" but the next logical question would be for that person to explain life's coincidences that often manifest as more of a "perfect storm of events," than a benign set of circumstances that are easily explained away. The Response While working one of my jobs the other night, my partner and I were eager to hit the road and get a meal. As our luck would have it, we were dispatched to a local nursing home for a cardiac arrest with CPR in progress. These types of calls are often anti-climactic and severely lack the intensity and drama often found on your TV shows. It's often someone who has been quite ill, has not one but many disease processes working against him and his aging set of organs, and they have simply run out of gas – so to speak. They're dying....