California Rescuers Receive Honors for Saving Lives

Mar. 7--Two veteran rescuers with a Sacramento ambulance company whose quick thinking saved their patients were among 36 first responders from across the state honored Tuesday at the Capitol.

Paramedic Michael Fenwick, a former Army medic who has been a paramedic for six years, received a Star of Life medal for realizing that an elderly woman's blood pressure had dropped suddenly and stabilizing her during transport.

Linda Duncan, an emergency medical technician for 19 years, received her Star of Life medal for recognizing that a discharged psychiatric patient whom she was transporting was having a life-threatening overdose.

Duncan and Fenwick's actions were celebrated by legislators and the California Ambulance Association at a lunch during the association's 2007 legislative summit.

Fenwick spotted the senior's rapid decline as he took her to hospital after she blacked out. He gave her fluids and high-flow oxygen. "We didn't know, but she was having a heart attack," he said. "She needed a stent."

Acting on a gut feeling, Duncan reassessed her patient and found a narcotics patch stuck to the woman's body in an unusual place -- undetected by the hospital staff who had sent her to a psychiatric facility -- and realized she was having a medication overdose. Duncan administered a narcotic antidote and returned to the hospital, saving her patient's life.

"We took her to the psychiatric facility the next day," Duncan recalled. "She didn't remember a thing, or me."

David A. Nevins, president of the California Ambulance Association, said Star of Life medals celebrate heroic acts and years of service by ambulance rescuers.

"We are nowhere without our paramedics and emergency medical technicians," Nevins said.

Other medal-winners included 15 paramedics and EMTs with Hall Ambulance in Bakersfield. They treated and transported six seriously injured children to a hospital last August after a supposedly harmless military round exploded as children were playing with it.

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