In demand in Alaska

ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS
ONE COLD, SNOWY NIGHT 10 years ago in Aniak, Alaska, Pete Brown's 14-year-old son Jeremiah was struck by a four-wheeler as he was walking home from the village gym. Brown found his son lying in the snow bleeding.
It was a chilling moment for Brown, a Vietnam vet and the village's volunteer fire chief. The nearest hospital was 150 miles away. Aniak didn't even have an ambulance. It took another four hours for a plane to arrive to take Jeremiah to the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage. He recovered, but it was a close call.
Brown led an effort to bring ambulance service to Aniak. It was a decision that would have a profound effect on this Kuskokwim River community, especially for the kids, although no one knew that at the time.
The number of 911 calls that first year shot up from 25 to 250. Staffing quickly became a problem. A community meeting was held, and 17 high school kids showed up to help. Brown started a training program. Seven boys and one girl stuck with it. The teens called themselves the Dragon Slayers. "The boys picked the name," Brown said.
Girls stepped forward
In time, the boys either graduated or quit. And then, Brown said, something odd happened. "The girls took over."
One by one they joined: Michelle, Sophia, Roxanne, Lisa, Sonya, Shigone. All were between age 13 and 16. They studied and practiced together, memorizing such lifesaving measures as the ratio of breaths to compressions and how to insert oral airways.
After 200 hours of training, the new Dragon Slayers started going on calls with the town's medics. It was not a cadet program. The girls were certified in emergency trauma, basic life support and CPR and were expected to help. And they did.
Aniak is a large village, with 572 people, according to the most recent census. It's not unusual that Aniak has a volunteer fire department, said Mark Barker at the state fire marshal's office. What's remarkable is the tremendous community involvement; it's usually a struggle to keep volunteer fire departments staffed in rural Alaska, he said. Many villages have equipment but don't know how to use it, he added.
Staffing used to be an issue in Aniak, but not anymore. Today, the department has so many volunteers it's hard to keep track of them, said Dave Lemaster, a volunteer firefighter and high school teacher.
"It's kind of like counting popcorn," he said.
It's a Monday night, training time for the Dragon Slayers. They meet in the loft at the fire department, which has plywood floors and funny furniture -- wheelchairs and ambulance beds for seats and an old door for a table
On a shift
Erinn Marteney and Caroline Kvamme, 16, both show up straight from basketball practice. Shauna Hamilton, 14, arrives a few minutes later. Tonight it's just the three of them.
Erinn has been on more than 100 calls. She said the most difficult are suicide attempts by teens she knows. "You just don't see it coming, and then you're the first to see it," she said.
"Everything's hard to deal with because you know everybody here," Erinn added, but you learn to keep your emotions in check. After a difficult call, they all meet back at the station to talk about how they're feeling, she said. "We end with a group hug."
"The maturity level of some of these folks is just amazing," said Michael Duxbury, an Aniak-based state trooper who has worked with the Dragon Slayers on snow-machine and four-wheeler wrecks.
The teens come into the program as passive, unsure kids who need to be reminded that "you don't call 911, you are 911," LeMaster said, but they don't stay that way for long.
The girls throw their used needles in a hazardous waste canister, and Brown tells them to unpack a bag of equipment and explain how each item works. They act as if he's just asked them to pick up their room.
"They love every minute of it, but they complain constantly," Brown says, rolling his eyes.
Difficult and rewarding
Shauna, an aspiring veterinarian, is taller and quieter than Erinn and hasn't been on as many calls. She became a Dragon Slayer about six months ago after a friend and her mother asked her to. The most difficult calls for her are when elders get sick, she knows they're going to die "and there's nothing you can do," she said.
Caroline, on the team about five months, said it's also rewarding to run into kids after you've been to their house to help or they've heard about you around town. "They say: 'I know you. You're the Dragon Slayers!' They just idolize you. It's cool."
Troopers want to capitalize on it. They've printed more than 700 posters featuring the Dragon Slayers and have enlisted the teens to help with safety presentations, Duxbury said.
Troopers are trying to figure out a way to get the teens to village schools all over the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta he said. Alcohol-related violence, injury and neglect are serious problems throughout the region. Nearly every call troopers respond to involves alcohol, Duxbury said. Kids sometimes show up drunk for school.
The Dragon Slayer program is an opportunity to stem some of that tragedy, Duxbury said. The hope is that at-risk kids will see "that these kids are on the ball, they're my age, they come from where I do, and I can be something too," he said.
Brown is "a great shepherd," Duxbury said. "He's a quite humble man who wants to do this work so these kids can be the shining stars."
Adjusting the curriculum
Aniak High School has tailored its curriculum to boost the Dragon Slayer program. Dragon Slayers have to maintain passing grades and vow to abstain from drugs and alcohol. The program builds self-esteem and keeps the teens busy, principal Ted VanBronkhorst said. "Busy people have less time for poor decisions."
April Kameroff, 21, was inspired by her brother to become a Dragon Slayer in 1999. Four days after she graduated from high school, the local Clara Morgan Subregional Clinic offered her a job, she said. Today she's a medical lab assistant studying to become a lab technician. She's also certified to teach CPR.
Being a Dragon Slayer "gave me this great job," Kameroff said recently, sitting in her office in a crisp white lab coat. The Dragon Slayers are "saving their own lives by helping others," LeMaster said.