James Kish: Cetronia Ambulance Corps Volunteer

Name: James “Jamie” Kish

Age: 25

Lives: South Whitehall Township

Family: Single; mom, Claire; and dad, Doug.

Job: Full-time registered nurse in the Emergency Room at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest. Started there in 2009 after earning a bachelor's degree in nursing from DeSales University.

Volunteer work: Pre-hospital registered nurse with . He joined the corps in 2001 at age 15 when he enrolled in the .

Elected to the corps’ board of directors in 2011. He worked “behind the scenes” with community leaders and ambulance corps personnel, focusing on capital purchases, projecting new building sites and establishing partnerships with community organizations.

He is also a lieutenant with the and works part-time as a pre-hospital registered nurse for Allentown.

Why do you do it? It’s fun, but mostly, I like to help people, and I can do that through my job, the ambulance corps and the fire company. I was brought up in a family devoted to helping people. My father is a former South Whitehall police officer and my mother has worked as an administrative partner (unit clerk) in the ER at LVH, so I get to work side-by-side with her in my job.

Lots of kids get into sports. I played baseball for Laurys Station. At , many of the kids go all out for sports. I had the choice of participating in sports or taking an Emergency Medical Technician course. I chose the EMT, so I guess that was sort of my “varsity” choice. After I graduated from DeSales and became an RN, I took the Pre-Hospital Registered Nurse class.

Tell us a story you’ll never forget about your experiences: While I was still in the TAP program in high school, I was dispatched to Parkland for a call about a wrestler from Pocono Mountain who was taken down and couldn’t feel anything. I had to take care of him--one of my peers--and I didn’t even know what to say to him on the way to the hospital, knowing that he might be paralyzed. I’ll never forget it. I never heard the outcome, which is unfortunate, but that’s the way things are. There are times when I wish I could follow up and find out how things turn out for the people I help, but it’s not really possible. We don’t usually get to know the outcome of a case. I’m still involved with the TAP program, and I’d like to encourage more young people to join the program.

What would you tell people interested in joining the ambulance corps? It’s a big family. If you really like it, you can have fun and help people every day. If you don’t want to run with the ambulance, you can still participate.

Also, if you’re interested in getting into health care or medicine, joining the corps gives you insight about the field. The TAP program is open to teens age 14 and older. Also, health care and medicine is a big part of our economy; the ambulance corps got me into health care, and ultimately helped me land a job with the largest employer in the Lehigh Valley.

On Cetronia: Cetronia has several locations: its original site on Broadway in Cetronia; at Station 56 on Schantz Road and on Williams Avenue, both in Upper Macungie Township, and on Pine Street in Whitehall. The corps utilizes “High Performance EMS,” a computer program that projects the highest volume of calls in an area, which is why people may see our trucks parked at different locations. By projecting, an ambulance stationed at one point may be just minutes from a call, which could potentially save a life. Also the corps recently formed a partnership with Lehigh County to build in the area of the soccer fields off Broadway in Cetronia, which will house all their vehicles and a communications center, so there’s a lot of opportunity to get involved.