|
In recognition of the Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce's 25th annual Valor Awards program in April, Talk Loudoun is proud to honor some of our everyday fire & rescue heroes with a series of articles in our "Behind The Brand" e-zine. This is the second in that series.
Station 18 at Full Throttle
By Nancy Croft Baker
 It's an unusual day when there's not a flurry of activity at Station 18 on Middlefield Drive in Cascades. Home to Sterling Volunteer Rescue Company 25, Sterling Volunteer Fire Company 18 and a weekday staff of career firefighters, this is the county's busiest station, serving the Cascades, Countryside, Sugarland Run and Lowes Island areas located north of Route 7. The combined stations respond to more than 5,600 calls annually, which make it especially remarkable that this is one of few remaining 24/7 volunteer fire and rescue companies in the county.
The Sterling Volunteer Rescue Squad, founded in 1964, has been recognized by EMS Magazine as the top emergency medical services (EMS) agency in the country. It has received the Governor's Award for emergency response and, along with Fire Company 18, has received numerous Valor Awards for outstanding service. "We're able to provide that high standard of performance because we attract such a high caliber of volunteers, including doctors, lawyers, teachers, police officers and career fire firefighters from other jurisdictions," notes Byron Andrews, who has served as chief of both Sterling volunteer rescue squads for the past 20 years.
When Andrews is not managing his staff of some 150 volunteers, he serves as career captain of a fire station in Alexandria. But Station 18 has been his home since 1978. "I started out just hanging around the station at age 16 because my friends were here," Andrews recalls. "They encouraged me to become a junior volunteer, and I've been here ever since."
 Both the Station 18 Fire Company, which was established in 1966 and is currently led by Chief Mickey Buchanan, and the Station 25 Rescue Company have a long history of attracting and mentoring young people interested in emergency response services. Through a partnership with Northern Virginia Community College, the station provides college-credit ride-alongs for students in NVCC's EMS programs, which in turn provides a steady stream of young volunteers to the station.
Sterling Rescue's crews alone provide a whopping 85,000 hours of volunteer service to Eastern Loudoun, saving taxpayers $2.2 million annually, Andrews notes. "We get folks who drive all the way from Richmond to volunteer, because they've heard of our reputation and people like Fred Ganzel."
Ganzel describes himself as a habitual paramedic. When he's not volunteering with both Sterling rescue companies, he's a trackside paramedic at Charlestown Races and Slots in West Virginia. Ganzel recently celebrated 33 years of volunteer service at Sterling Rescue, covering five 24-hour shifts a week.
His dedication stems from knowing personally how critical it is to receive prompt emergency care. In the summer of 1976, Ganzel accidentally ran over his three-year-old daughter's foot with a lawnmower. "I was so impressed with the emergency responders that I joined the Sterling Rescue Squad the following spring," Ganzel recalls. Now he faces life-and-death decisions on a regular basis.
"One call I will never forget was when I responded to a pediatrician's office to transport a nine-year-old girl to Children's Hospital," Ganzel almost whispers. "She was having trouble breathing, but the pediatrician said the episode had passed." When Ganzel arrived, he didn't like what he saw. "Years of experience told me that the little girl needed to be flown by helicopter." The pediatrician and parents were reluctant. "Something told me that if the little girl had another episode in transit, it may not pass." After calling the hospital director, Ganzel was able to persuade the pediatrician to have the girl transported by helicopter." Two minutes from the hospital, the helicopter paramedics reported the girl was in respiratory arrest. Fortunately, they got her to the hospital in time to receive life-saving treatment. "The little girl survived, and it was a great day," Ganzel says.
For cases that don't end as happily, the station relies on its chaplains for practical and spiritual reinforcement. "When we respond to a fatality, I'm so thankful for our chaplains, who arrive at the scene at any time of day or night to help families through tragedies," Ganzel says.
Enter Charlie Grant, the chaplain of chaplains. He's not only a member of both Sterling Volunteer Rescue and Sterling Volunteer Fire but is the original chaplain of the county's fire and rescue program. Known for his service as pastor of Grace Baptist Church, Grant was approached by the Sherriff's Department in 1979 to start a chaplain program. The department also asked him to build a shelter program for homeless teens - a program that became the Good Shepherd Alliance. (Read more about Grant's important work with GSA in a future issue of Talk Loudoun.)
For more than 31 years, Grant has been faithfully on call 24 hours a day. "When my congregation hears my radio go off, they know I've got to go -- even If I'm in the middle of a sermon," chuckles Grant, who also serves Loudoun County police, sheriffs and the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) at Dulles Airport.
Arriving at the scene to administer support to bereaved families requires special skills, Grant notes. "Believe it or not, it's not something they teach a lot of in seminary." Chaplains also provide as much a support to emergency responders as they do to grieving families. Grant encourages his chaplains to simply spend time hanging out with emergency responders. "It's the best way to get to know people and the best way to know how to help people," he says.
In addition to spiritual support, Grant provides nourishment to hard-working fire and rescue responders with a mobile canteen and counseling unit. Stocked with donated Gatorade, meals from Chick-fil-A and food from Costco, the canteen is a welcome sight to tired firefighters on extensive calls, says Station 18 Captain Robert Leeper. "We're very fortunate to have an outpouring of support from the local community." And that 25 square mile community is growing rapidly.
Leeper's seven-person career crew, which staffs the station on weekdays from 6 a.m. - 6 p.m., spends a significant amount of time trying to keep up with the community's needs, such as delivering safety talks at  every local public school and performing routine fire inspections at multi-family housing complexes, commercial shopping centers and businesses. When not on fire runs, they also spend a lot of time updating their maps of the constantly developing community.
"At last count there were well over 900 streets just in our emergency response area," Leeper notes. "It's a real challenge to review and update each street." While young fire technician Blaine Keyser maintains the electronic database, the station's fire and rescue volunteers physically cross check the information on each street to note any changes in fire hydrant locations or new addresses. It's a long and tedious process but one that is vitally important to ensuring rapid response time. And Station 18 prides itself on having the fastest response time in the county -- thanks to an extraordinarily dedicated group of first responders and a supportive community. |
|
Exec Pets
From time to time, Talk Loudoun will highlight executives with their greatest ally, their pet(s), along with photos taken by award-winning, renowned people/pet photographer Kathy Kupka (kathykupka.com). This is the third in that series. |
Rescue me
By Betsy Allen
 "Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole."
Roger Caras
Exit the elevator into the lobby of Toth Financial Advisory Corp. of Leesburg on any given day, and the first sound you hear may be a slight rumble. It's nothing to do with the weather - it's just a little white dog, Mousie, letting out a tiny, protective growl and sizing up the folks who visit her owner, Priss Toth.
Priss and her husband, Tom, bring their dogs to work every day. Mousie stays close to Priss, while Tom's dog, Bruiser, a much larger, more outgoing Boxer mix, makes pals with the clientele. The animals are a fixture in an office that prides itself on an informal and friendly atmosphere.
Mousie, whose real name is Cecilia, is a Chinese Crested, a breed that features a small face and a slender frame. Many folks may be familiar with one type of Chinese Crested - the dogs with hairless bodies and a punk-rock pouf of hair on the head and on the legs near the paws. Cecelia is a Chinese Crested Powderpuff, a variation where the animal is completely covered in long, silky hair. Both the Hairless and the Powderpuff varieties can exist in the same litter.
"We call her Mousie, because she really is a mouse," Priss Toth says. "When we got her, she was just over 4 pounds of bone, no muscle development, with brown teeth. She wouldn't look anybody in the eyes."
Priss purchased Mousie from a breeder in Florida, who sent the dog via air to Washington National Airport by way of Houston and Newark, N.J. The tiny animal endured the noise and jostling of being routed between multiple destinations, and was stowed in a crate for 18 hours. But this was just the last sad chapter of Mousie's life in Florida. What seemed like a simple matter of buying a dog from a breeder became nothing less than a rescue.
Priss had been interested in buying a Chinese Crested and had seen an ad in a popular dog magazine. Upon contacting the breeder, she was sent a photo of Mousie cowering in a towel. This was the first of several warning signs that all might not be well with this dog's situation, but Priss was undeterred. "My husband, Tom, said, 'Red flag! Red flag! But it'll be your dog. Do what you want.'"
Priss knew the dog was non-show quality and non-papered, and agreed to pay approximately $400 to purchase her, plus another $100 to have her shipped. The breeder insisted on a certified check instead of allowing Priss to wire the money. "Red flag! Red flag!" her husband said again.
When the time came to take delivery of the dog, the Toths' initial plan was to fly down to Florida themselves and visit the breeding facility. Tom Toth is a retired Marine pilot and has his own plane. "When I called the lady, she said, 'Oh no, don't come. I've broken my leg.'" She insisted upon shipping the dog instead of allowing the Toths to come to her place. By this time, Priss was convinced that she must follow through with her plans. "I really felt we were saving this dog," she says. "I wanted this dog."
On the appointed day, Priss made the trek from Leesburg to Washington National, and only then found out the odyssey her dog had been on. Priss had at one time bred Mastiffs and knew that the proper way to transport animals was by direct flight. "I got angrier and angrier," she says. "I didn't get home until midnight with the dog. When I did, I called the breeder and said, "What the ...?" The breeder defended herself and offered nothing in the way of an explanation for the shipping of the dog and her condition upon arrival. "I ended up calling AKC and reporting the problem," Priss says.
It turns out the breeder had so many complaints against her that the AKC sent an investigator who discovered how the dogs in her care were being treated. Mousie and the other dogs at her facility were kept in 3 ft. by 4 ft. cages, where they were hosed down with water. While they were taken out of the cages a couple of times per day, Priss says, the dogs' paws had never touched grass. As a result of the investigation, the breeder is barred from registering or showing her dogs, but unfortunately she can still raise and sell them. |
|
 
|
|
For Mousie, the major part of her nightmare was over. She was brought into the Toth home where she had loving owners and one very protective big brother. "Bruiser jumped up on the bed and saw what kind of trauma she was in (the first night)," Priss remembers. "He lay by her all night and if she put her head up, he'd lick her as if to say, 'Everything is all right. You're in a safe place now.'"
The day after she took delivery, Priss drove the dog to the vet. He examined the traumatized, perpetually shaking animal, then told Priss, "Take her back." Not willing to turn her back on a dog that needed her, Priss refused. "Whatever's been done to her, I can't send her back." She knew Mousie would take extra time and effort, but Priss felt she was up for the challenge. "This is OK," she told herself. "I've got her and will try to make her whole."
So, every day, Mousie goes to work with Priss - to hear the phones ring, see the come and go of clients, and hopefully become less shy as time goes by. She's weighs more than 7 pounds now, and on the day that Talk Loudoun visited Toth Financial, she was brave enough to sit in on the interview.
"I think we have some clients come in and think it's kind of strange," Priss notes. "But lots of people think it's cool. They come in and say, 'Priss, where's Mousie?' or they come in to say hi to Bruiser."
Priss is one of those folks who can't imagine life without dogs and feels they can make life a little better for everyone. "Every single person who works here has a dog," she says. "As I designed the offices, I thought about how the staff is here more daylight hours than they are at their home. They have to be comfortable. So if somebody wants to bring their dogs, they can. It adds a homey atmosphere. We've never been formal people."
And while Tom Toth vowed "I'll have nothing to do with this dog" when Mousie came, that too has changed. "Tom is real protective of her. Of course, he adores her," Priss says with a smile. "And she's happiest when it's just Tom and I and her and Bruiser - everything is safe and wonderful."
|
Coming May 19th: Our Fourth Rendezvous Destination
Four times per year, Talk will dedicate an entire Rendezvous issue to a related destination getaway within 4 hours of Loudoun County: 4 hours by plane, train, Bolt Bus or car!
Let Us Help:
We're happy to get the word out about any volunteer or fundraising needs your organization has, or information about your special event. Check out the Events/Needs link on Talk's website and follow the listed guidelines, hit Submit and we'll take it from there - that's our promise to you.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
