Paramedic Carly Marmaduke deserves all the ‘thanks’ she gets

The other night, Sonoma Life Support paramedic Carly Marmaduke was excited, and little bit nervous, about meeting Steve Bjork. Carly was on the emergency team that helped save Steve’s life when he suffered a heart attack, and she just wanted to live up to his expectations.

“It is so rare for us to be able to go back and meet someone we saved. I hope I am everything he hopes I’ll be. What he expected,” she said about meeting Steve at the Sonoma County Paramedic’s Association Survivor’s Dinner at Benziger Family Winery. The annual event gives first responders the chance to get to know the people who consider them their heroes.

The last time Carly met Steve he was completely unresponsive. She and her partner Robert Illia were called to his home, administered early treatment, brought him to the hospital and had no idea what happened to him after that – until her team was informed that they would be honored at the dinner and would meet Steve and his family.

Although paramedics almost never know what happens to their patients once their role is completed, Carly has most certainly saved many lives in the seven years she’s been doing this high-pressure work. “One day I got the itch to be a firefighter,” she said, explaining that when she was a 15-year-old Sonoma Valley High School student she signed on to be a Schell-Vista Explorer, working as a volunteer firefighter until she was 18 and aged out of the program. She next started volunteering with Sonoma Valley Fire and Rescue, working for Chief Robert Norbom, who told her if she wanted to get a job as a firefighter she should also be a paramedic. Carly enrolled in the very competitive program at Santa Rose Junior College and, “fell in love with the human body,” she said of her paramedic studies. It was then she knew her path would be toward medicine, not firefighting.

Her early goal was to continue working in Sonoma, so when she was offered a paramedic internship in Berkeley, she hesitated. Norbom told her to take the Berkeley offer, as it is perhaps the most cutting-edge pre-hospital fire department in the Bay Area.

“It was the best thing I was ever shoved into,” she said. “It was a culture shock for me, but they were teaching me beyond the bubble of Sonoma.” At 20 years old she was going out on calls “all day long” on a 24-hours-on, 24-hours-off schedule. While she was there she witnessed the clinic trial of Fentanyl, a morphine substitute that is now the go-to pain reliever for paramedics.

Next Carly returned to Sonoma, working for a year as a paramedic before moving on to her current employer, Sonoma Life Support/AMR in Santa Rosa, first part time and now full time. And she never stopped going to school. Now 27, she says she has “not taken a semester off since kindergarten.”

While working and living in Santa Rosa, she commuted to San Jose State University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in health sciences in 2014, a degree not offered at schools closer to home.

Her current goal is to become a physician’s assistant. She hopes to be accepted to the physician’s assistant program at UC Davis in 2017.

Carly is the daughter of Troy and Dawn Marmaduke, part of a tight-knit family with deep Sonoma roots. She lives in Santa Rosa in a home she owns with her boyfriend Derek Sullivan.

In her paramedic life she’s delivered a baby and been on calls for spider bites and nosebleeds, as well as gun shot wounds and horrific car accidents. She thrives on it all, saying the only time it can be scary it when she has to deal with someone who is on drugs. “They can be very combative,” says Carly.

“Being a paramedic is not always about a major medical emergency,” she says. “Sometimes it’s just being able to hold someone’s hand when something horrible has happened to them. I’m just the first person in a line of many who helps them feel better, to say, ‘It’s OK, we’re going to get you the help you need.’”

She appreciates the opportunity to tell a suicidal teenager that it does get better. Or bring a hospice patient home and make sure they are comfortable in their own bed.

And sometimes, as in the case of Steve Bjork, to save a life. Steve is the lucky one who got to say thank you.