Fighting fires, responding to life-or-death calls, properly handling mental health emergencies—the duties of first responders in Centre County are both challenging and demanding. And yet for those who do these tough jobs, being able to assist people in distress is fulfilling enough to compensate for the tensions.
Town&Gown spoke to a cross section of first responders from across the county to get a sense of their daily lives—and to understand why they do what they do.
John Surkovic
John Surkovic of Philipsburg has been an emergency medical technician for more than two decades, so there’s not much that rattles him. “Your training takes over, what you’ve learned over the years,” he says. “If you’ve done it for so long, it’s just part of you. You just do it.”
Even a high-stress call like cardiac arrest has become second nature. “I’m almost used to cardiac arrests now,” says Surkovic, who in 2022 responded to 578 calls with Centre LifeLink EMS.
That doesn’t mean he’s jaded or that the calls don’t affect him. Medical emergencies or traumatic injuries can be one of the worst moments in a person’s life, and first responders are on the front lines.
“Like we always say, it’s their emergency. They’re calling us for help, whether it’s something simple or something tragic or severe … and we’re expected to be professional, compassionate, do our job, do our duty, and sometimes we wear many hats,” Surkovic says. “As an EMT, the biggest part sometimes is listening to people, listening to what’s going on, and sometimes that’s more than any medication or anything we can do is to listen to them.”
Surkovic works the day shift at Centre LifeLink and has partnered with the same paramedic, Matthew Burnheimer, for several years.
Typically, there are three ambulances on a day shift and two at night. On weekends with a heavily televised or popular Penn State football game or other special events, an additional ambulance is assigned to the day shift. “We try to prepare for the worst,” Surkovic says.
On the day Surkovic spoke with T&G, nine calls came in during his twelve-hour shift, meaning he and Burnheimer took three of them, which he describes as typical for a summer weekend. “There’s some days we will have ten to fifteen calls [among three ambulances]. There’s some days we might have four altogether. It varies.” When Penn State students return from break it “gets pretty busy, especially during the night shift,” he says.
EMTs and paramedics are usually relaxing in the computer room completing patient-care reports or doing continuing education for recertification when their pager alerts them to a call. “I don’t go running out the door,” he says. “I walk, don’t run, to the ambulance.”
Surkovic praises the local fire and police departments Centre LifeLink works with on a regular basis. He especially appreciates the police, who often are the first to arrive and “usually give us a quick report as we’re walking to the scene.” Even listening to police transmissions en route helps the EMTs and paramedics prepare for what’s ahead so they’re “not walking into something blind.”
To take his mind off work, Surkovic has many outlets: fly fishing (his biggest catch was a nineteen-inch brown trout at Penns Creek), playing drums, drawing, painting, and coaching the drumline for the Philipsburg Osceola Senior High School marching band, where daughter Alisha, 15, plays drums, and Emily, 13, was a Silk, or flag corps member, last year.
On weekends off, he sometimes gets together with the other responders on the day shift for barbecues or cookouts at someone’s home or to shoot pistols at the gun range. “We’re all good friends,” says Surkovic, who is also active with the fire department in Philipsburg and in EMS with the Mountain Top Fire Co. in Sandy Ridge.
Lisa Gatzke-Kopp
As a volunteer EMT with Centre LifeLink, Lisa Gatzke-Kopp doesn’t consider herself a “traditional first responder,” a term she reserves for the career full-timers. Going on two years since being EMT-certified, she has become “more confident and experienced” when it comes to the demands of the role.
Still, life-threatening calls where someone isn’t breathing or their heart has stopped can be more “anxiety provoking,” she says. Fortunately, then, for the most urgent calls two ambulances often respond, comprising two EMTs and two paramedics. “You need extra people to make sure all the things are happening right away, and to me that’s what’s helpful, knowing I’m there with a team of people who are all going to work together,” says Gatzke-Kopp, a Penn State professor of human development and family studies, and director of the university’s dual-title program in social and behavioral neuroscience.
As responders see an increase in mental-health-related calls, Gatzke-Kopp’s background in psychology and the study of psychiatric disorders and how they affect people is useful. She can identify when someone is having a mental-health crisis and has the know-how “to respond to someone whose behavior is erratic.”
That expertise also helps her personally cope with the stresses of emergency response. While the period following a call offers a reprieve and time to decompress while doing paperwork or cleaning the ambulance, she understands how stress affects bodies, minds, and emotions. “It helps me be a little more aware of those experiences and how they tend to linger and build up and the need to address them,” says Gatzke-Kopp, a mom of two sons, ages 17 and 20.
While her primary focus is taking care of the patient, she also considers supporting a patient’s loved ones a “really important part of the job.” Gatzke-Kopp recalls a cardiac-arrest call at a State College residence where the patient didn’t survive. While waiting for the coroner to arrive at the home, she talked to the deceased’s loved one to help him understand what was happening and gave him time to sit with the body. The deceased had enjoyed poetry, and the loved one read some of those poems to the responders.
“Just that experience was important for him in his grieving process and so being able to at least support that and help him … it felt like I made a difference for him and how he grieved in that moment,” she says. “That felt like the best I could do. You can’t always save everyone, but it’s still important that you were there and you still helped somebody in this moment of incredible heartbreak.”
Jason and Miles Brooks
Miles Brooks grew up admiring his dad’s firefighting exploits, and he couldn’t wait to volunteer with the Miles Township Fire Co. as soon as he was eligible. “You’re allowed to be a member when you turn sixteen, and so I joined on my sixteenth birthday,” he says.
Just knowing his dad “could go out and help people and … sometimes, if there was a vehicle crash he could use the Jaws of Life to cut somebody out of their car, or fight fire—as a young boy, that’s a pretty cool thing to know your dad does,” says Brooks, now a 19-year-old freshman at Clarion University who aspires to be a state trooper.
Miles’ father, Jason, a volunteer fire captain and a former chief of Penns Valley EMS, says the demands of fire response can be hard on families, because as volunteers they’re going about their daily lives when they’re called away. That was hard for his wife, Judy, at times when he would leave, he says. “It’s also hard for us.”
Switching into response mode begins with the pager going off and an adrenaline rush kicking in, says Jason, an associate teaching professor and director of the forensic science program at Penn State, where he also serves as adjunct veterinary pathologist. “It takes some seasoning to overcome the “body’s natural desire to make me want to go 100 miles a minute.”
For him, the harder part may be switching off the response mode after a call, especially if a person is severely injured or perishes.
“Unwinding from those can be very difficult,” says Jason, who is also a deputy coroner. “Fortunately, we have each other to rely on and to talk to.” The group will sit together for hours at the station talking it out. Even after a routine call with no bad injuries or catastrophic damage, they’ll still hang around the station and talk for camaraderie and friendship. “But often we run through in our minds and we verbalize, ‘What would we do different?’”
He also points to a group called the Critical Incident Stress Management Team, which offers debriefings where personnel involved in an incident can openly discuss what they’ve experienced with others who experienced the same incident. It “helps tremendously,” he says. “Just to get it off your chest and share with each other what you all saw and felt and you start to recognize that you’re not alone.”
Having a family adds another dimension to being a responder. “I really find it very comforting to have my family to come home to and to be able to talk these things through with my wife,” he says.
Sean Kleckner
Sean Kleckner vividly recalls responding to his first emergency as a fourteen-year-old junior firefighter. “It was one of the most severe calls I’ve ever seen in my career,” he says. An accident between a car and van occurred “probably near midnight” between Mill Hall and Beech Creek. About seven people altogether were trapped in the vehicles for an extended period of time. “Their injuries required the use of several medical helicopters … and it required a response from emergency services in the area that overwhelmed the system,” he says.
He recalls some responders—answering the need for more hands in the middle of the night—arriving in shorts and starting IVs on the injured. It’s not just the severity of the call that sticks with him but how volunteers left their homes in the middle of the night to come and help.
A third-generation firefighter, Kleckner married into a firefighting family. His wife Katie’s father and both of her brothers are also firefighters. “She understands and my kids understand the importance of me serving the community,” he says, referring to sons Caleb, 11, and Connor, 15.
Over time, Kleckner has learned the best response to calls is “to bring the calm to their emergency, so they understand that we’re there to help and we know what we’re doing.”
Besides being a volunteer firefighter with the Beech Creek-Blanchard Fire Co. and Citizens Hose Co. in Lock Haven, Kleckner is a paramedic with Centre LifeLink. He started as an EMT and was certified as a paramedic in 2003.
Seeing death and dying is a part of the job, and sometimes responders need help coping. “We rely a lot on coworkers. We rely on our family to be able to talk through difficult calls or moments,” he says. Centre LifeLink also has a program to help responders through challenges, such as flashbacks or difficult calls, which is helpful, he says.
Centre LifeLink’s administration is also extremely supportive. Kent Knable, the EMS chief, has an open-door policy and it’s not uncommon for him to reach out to an employee after a difficult call, Kleckner says. “They understand what we go through and they’re there for us,” he says. “It’s just comforting to know that you have an administration that has your back, so to speak, and you can reach out to them at any time, whether they’re in the office or not.”
Amanda Barnes
Howard native Amanda Barnes is one of nine police officers, including the chief, in Spring Township, and the only female on the force.
Policing is a good career fit for her, she says. “It’s obviously a stressful job, but I think that just pushes me to be a stronger person in stressful situations and learn from the stressful things and do better next time.”
Her wildest call to date happened on July 13 at 8:22 p.m. Initially, what was reported as a vehicle fire—which she felt she could handle with a fire extinguisher— ended up being much more threatening, and not just because she was the only officer on duty when the call came in.
As she drove to the scene, the seriousness of the call increased, with reports of explosions coming over the police radio.
“When I got there, I was told by a witness this wasn’t accidental,” Barnes says. “I called our detective right away. I knew I was going to need help. He pointed me in the right direction, and I just did what I could until more people were able to come in. I ended up having to leave the scene because the [suspect] was spotted somewhere else.” Shortly after she apprehended the suspect, the detective, who was nearby, arrived to assist her.
The incident ended with fire destroying a vehicle and severely damaging a home. It also resulted in the arrest of a man for attempted homicide and arson. “Thankfully, everybody was out of the house,” she says. “The fire department was able to put out the fire pretty quickly,” and a cat inside the home was rescued.
After the call wrapped up, including paperwork and additional legwork by the detective, Barnes coolly carried on with her duties. “We had some other calls pending,” she says. “I honestly went on to those calls and finished them up and kept on with my night. The adrenaline kind of slowly comes down as you do other things, I guess.” T&G
Lisa Reyes is a freelance writer in State College.
