As a basic emergency medical technician, St. John resident Clarence Stephenson, 39, wears the same hat at two jobs. He’s a corporal at V.I. Fire Service’s Coral Bay fire station and works 36 hours a week for the territory’s Emergency Medical Service at Morris deCastro Clinic in Cruz Bay.
“I love helping people,” he said.
When he’s at the fire station, he’s the EMT on duty. Stephenson said every shift at the Coral Bay fire station has an EMT at the station because the response time for an EMS ambulance to arrive from Cruz Bay is too long. He said that the EMT on duty at the Coral Bay station responds to medical emergencies in the Coral Bay area, stabilizes the patient and waits for EMS to arrive to provide to transport the patient.
When people in Coral Bay call 911 for medical assistance, “they dispatch EMS and Fire simultaneously,” he explained.
There is no EMT on duty at the Cruz Bay fire station because EMS is nearby.
Stephenson said a planned merger between Fire and EMS will provide an ambulance in Coral Bay and cut response time. The merger is scheduled for the fall, Stephenson said.
He joined the Fire Service in 2006 after working for many years for Varlack Ventures on their ferry boats. He holds a captain’s license.
“When I got my kids, I thought about my career,” he said, discussing why he made the move.
He said Planning and Natural Resources was his first choice, but Fire called first so he jumped at the chance. He signed up to take EMT classes in 2007, finishing up in 2008.
Stephenson said many of the calls deal with vehicle accidents and cardiac arrests, but the EMT stationed in Coral Bay is called upon to deal with all kinds of emergencies. Because St. John is such a small community, some of those calls come from friends and family, but he said he puts on his “professional hat” and goes to work.
“But the hardest call to deal with is a child,” he said.
He responded when his grandfather, Ernest Wells Sr., died several years ago. While Stephenson lived with his grandfather in Cruz Bay for many years, Wells’ advanced age meant a move to the home of his son Warren Wells Sr. and his wife Yvonne Wells in Coral Bay.
“He was more like my father,” Stephenson said of his grandfather.
Stephenson’s mother is St. John resident Margaret Wells.
He is the father of two girls, Caliyah, 12, and Claresa, 13. Claresa lives with her mother on St. John but spends lots of time with her father. Caliyah is spending this year with her father.
When he’s not working at EMS or Fire, Stephenson teaches in the V.I. Territorial Emergency Management Services Community Emergency Response Team program on St. Thomas and St. Croix, training members of the community to provide basic skills. He said in case of an emergency such as a hurricane, earthquake or tsunami, emergency responders will be busy and might not be able to respond as quickly as they’d like so those in the CERT program will be able to step in.
“I teach things like how to make a splint with a magazine cover,” he said.
He also serves as the coach for Julius E. Sprauve School’s after-school basketball program. He’s proud of the fact that one of the teams won a championship, and now that the Pine Peace basketball court is in good shape, he hopes St. John will be able to host tournaments.
As for his near future, Stephenson said he’s fifth on the list to make sergeant at Fire. In 20 years, he said he expects to be retired.
“I’ll be doing something but not as strenuous as I’m doing now,” he said.
