Saluting Norfolk’s Volunteers

Text By Janet Gokay Mead
Photo By Jon Reideman

The Norfolk Lions Club Ambulance may be on the small side, but its volunteers are remarkable for their dedication. Many of the ambulance’s 30 active volunteers sign up for a six-hour shift and, off-hours, use a system of two-way radios, pagers and emails to answer emergency calls throughout the week. They are ready to respond to Norfolk’s emergency needs 24/7, 365 days a year.

Two members of the corps, Tom Hodgkin and Tom Vorenberg, who began as volunteer ambulance drivers years ago, recently decided to take the next step and become Emergency Medical Responders (EMRs). Hodgkin, a former college English professor, explained that the Norfolk ambulance likes to go out with a crew of three: a driver, an EMR and an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT). 

EMR certification demands time: a 56-hour classroom curriculum, a state-mandated practical exam and a national certification exam.  Both Hodgkin and Vorenberg took a course this fall offered jointly with the Salisbury Volunteer Ambulance Service, co-taught by Salisbury’s Jackie Rice and Kitty Hickcox, the Norfolk ambulance chief.  Both men passed their practical exams in December and took the national test this past winter. They are both now nationally certified. 

“I felt that, having been with the ambulance as long as I have—and seeing how committed and responsible the other volunteers are—I needed to pull my weight a little bit more,” said Vorenberg, head of the history department at Indian Mountain School. And pull his weight he did: following school days that ran from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., he’d head straight to EMR classes from 6 to 9 p.m. Then, owing to his work schedule, he’d often end up signing on for Sundays, 6 p.m. to midnight.

Tom Hodgkin is equally committed to the Norfolk ambulance. “I’m officially signed up for six hours a week,” he said, “but 60 percent of the calls I respond to are when I’m not on schedule.”

The ambulance corps is always eager to recruit new members. “I was riding in the ambulance with a family member when I first came here in 2008, and I was, frankly, recruited on the spot,” recalled Hickcox. She hopes to similarly snare new members as dedicated as Hodgkin and Vorenberg, warning with a laugh, “We tend to recruit at the most inopportune times.”