Ray Preziosi is a cinematographer in the motion picture industry. But when a house is on fire in his town of Rosendale, New York, he exchanges his light meter for a firehose. Preziosi is a volunteer firefighter.
Bill Malone is an administrator and adjunct science and math professor at St. John’s University in Queens, New York. But when one of his neighbors in the Long Island village of Malverne, New York, is having a heart attack, he swaps his calculator for a defibrillator. Malone is a volunteer emergency medical technician (EMT).
In both cases, the operative word is “volunteer.”
While big cities have full-time, career first responders who are paid with tax dollars, most suburban and rural communities rely completely on unpaid personnel for both fire and ambulance services. According to the National Fire Protection Association, 67 percent of first responders in the United States are volunteers.
Preziosi has been one for 46 years. Even as a child, he gravitated toward fire service. He tricked out his bicycle by attaching a shampoo bottle to act as a fire extinguisher and a garden hose to act as a fire hose. When his father dropped a cigarette butt on the ground, Preziosi would “respond” to the “fire” by hopping on his bike in the garage, rushing to the spigot, connecting the hose, and putting out the cigarette butt.
Preziosi joined the North Massapequa Fire Department on Long Island at age 22 and served for 22 years, until he relocated to Southern California in 1997. During his four years there, there was no volunteer department for him to join. Preziosi recalled watching the fire department in Arcadia, California, screeching through an intersection, doing what he’s done countless times. “I practically burst into tears,” he said.
Malone is in his 45th year of volunteer service. While most departments combine fire and ambulance, Malverne has two separate units. He decided to join the ambulance corps at age 18, in 1976. He was inspired to join (in part) because “Emergency!,” a popular television series at the time, glorified first responders.
