This Thanksgiving season, send a thank you to first responders
In this strange year, it’s easy to find things about which to be grumpy. But it can be equally simple to find many things for which we should be so grateful and thankful.
Doctors, nurses and their assistants. Ambulance and hospital crews. Grocery store workers, pharmacy clerks, stockers and other retail employees. Restaurant workers and delivery folks who keep the supply chain cranking even when some of us are (again) stockpiling anything that resembles paper towels and facial or toilet tissue.
This Thanksgiving thank-you card, however, focuses on one particular segment for which the Tanner clan is especially, eternally thankful: First responders.
At the first squeal of a siren in Cambria, neighbors often take to social media and phones to find out what’s happening, who’s hurt or ill and how those neighbors can help. Curiosity and helpfulness are, in equal measures, how North Coasters roll.
Those of us who’ve needed the services of the first responders using those sirens also take a few seconds to whisper a thank you to and/or say a prayer for those who run toward the danger instead of away from it.
If you, like we, have watched firefighters battle to save as much of your burning home as they could, while protecting your neighbors’ homes and the surrounding landscape, you know what I mean.
If someone in your home has experienced a heart attack, stroke, broken leg, appendicitis or an imminent birth of a child, you know what I mean.
If you’ve been injured in an accident, you know what I mean.
If someone has broken into your home, if you’ve been threatened, ripped off by a scam artist or had something stolen, you know what I mean.
It doesn’t have to be a tragedy, accident or crime to trigger the need and the gratitude: If you’ve, as the phrase goes, “fallen and I can’t get up,” or need a ceiling light bulb or smoke alarm battery changed and can’t go up a ladder safely, you also know what I mean.
Often those services are provided with a layer of kindness. We’ve all seen:
• Firefighters who rescued from the flames things they thought were special to us, or who battled to save a trapped critter.
• Paramedics who took extra time to reassure a frightened patient or made sure family members were OK.
• Sheriff’s deputies who comforted people who are injured or just plain scared.
We’ve been blessed by far more instances of that kind of extra-gentle treatment than I have time or space for listing them all.
During the seemingly endless COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve all spent a lot of time, effort and prayers thanking those on the hospital front lines, as well we should, and should continue to do.
We also should thank those trying so hard to help protect us from the novel coronavirus, from sanitation crews to people who wear their masks while outside of their homes, to the often harassed workers who have to enforce mask-wearing rules, especially when some people angrily refuse to abide by those rules.
Pandemic or no pandemic, life goes on — and we often need help when dealing with things.
First responders respond.
I’ve spent parts of nearly 30 years out in the field with those responders, at the scene of crimes, fires or accidents — watching them work feverishly to extract someone from a demolished vehicle or race to the hospital with someone who almost drowned, or haul off to jail an escaped prisoner from Los Angeles who was accused of murder.
It’s hard, emotionally draining work. I’ve comforted a deputy in tears when the child he tried to save didn’t make it. I’ve watched a team of exhausted, dejected firefighters battling uselessly to save a burning house. At our fire, one of the firefighters was crying when he came up to me and said, “Kathe, we tried so hard, but we can’t save it.”
Sure, it may take some time for a deputy to show up at the scene of the crime. Staffing levels aren’t what they should be to cover such a widespread county with widely varying law enforcement needs.
Crimes in Cambria rarely take on the same intensity of those in major communities, but for victims of those crimes, the need for help and kindness is just as important.
To be totally transparent, some folks may have had a less than pleasant encounter with a law enforcer. And, yes, some overzealous law enforcers have gone overboard.
But if someone draws a knife, breaks into a home, steals a car, nabs a purse or even lights off fireworks in the middle of Cambria’s landmark Monterey pine forest, it’s so reassuring to know that a call to 911 will notify someone in authority to direct first responders to the situation. The same is true if someone’s having a medical emergency; if a fire breaks out; if someone crashes into your car, your business or your home, or if a tree falls into your house or onto a power pole.
So, thank you firefighters, paramedics and ambulance drivers, law enforcers, tree, utility and road crews, dispatchers and so many others! We know you’ll be working extra long and hard during this strange, busy holiday season, but we hope you can still have a happy Thanksgiving and holiday season.
And please keep yourselves safe, too. We need you, and we’re so thankful that you’re there when we do.
