After several life adventures, the kind others only dream about, Ernest Matthias, 50, has settled into a comfortable life that includes a job as both a firefighter and basic emergency medical technician at the Coral Bay fire station.
“Our job is to stabilize until the ambulance arrives,” he said.
The ambulance situation is so key to saving lives in Coral Bay that Matthias suggested the Fire Service have one of its own.
The Fire Service goal is to have an EMT on duty every shift at the Coral Bay fire station, because it takes at least 20 minutes for the ambulance to arrive from Cruz Bay.
The Coral Bay EMTs provide life-saving service for all sorts of ailments – heart attacks, strokes, and – according to Matthias – people who drive off the edge of the island’s steep roads.
It’s the hills that pose one of the EMT’s biggest challenges, Matthias said. He said houses are often located down steep hillsides, which means the EMTs have to carry the patients up those hills to the ambulance.
When Matthias signed on to be a firefighter 15 years ago, becoming an EMT was one of the requirements. While he’s often called to the task in Coral Bay, he said he also works on a per diem basis for the Health Department at its Cruz Bay ambulance base.
Matthias, 50, works only a few miles from where he grew up in John’s Folly. He still lives there at the family compound with his wife, Donna, and their daughters, Seala, 12, and Sierra, 10. His mother, Mariel Matthias, and his grandmother, Mary Wiltshire, both live nearby.
He said he learned to live off the land from both of them as well as his father, also named Ernest Matthias. Matthias said it was a rural existence growing up in John’s Folly, with the family raising goats, sheep, ducks, chickens, and pigs to eat. The sea at their doorstep provided plenty of fish and other seafood to augment the menu. And the family had a vegetable garden and fruit trees to round out their diet.
“We always had chores, but back then I didn’t want to do them,” he said.
As Matthias got older, he definitely signed on for hard work and had his fingers in a lot of pies. He was a member of the Virgin Islands’ bobsleigh team that spent five years on the World Cup circuit, traveling to Canada, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, and France. The trip to France was for the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville. Alas, the sled that carried Matthias didn’t finish the race. Matthias said a crew disagreement caused them to pull out of the four-man race after two runs.
“When I came back, I had enough of that and became a dive instructor,” Matthias said.
His work as a dive instructor, working for Maho Bay Camps concession holder Paradise Aqua Tours, continued on a part-time basis until Maho Bay closed its doors in May. He also taught sailing and windsurfing.
In 1997, Matthias crewed on St. Thomas resident Peter Holmberg’s sailing team that challenged for the America’s Cup. Matthias said the crew made it all the way to a mini-cup in New Zealand.
“We got beat but it was a good experience,” he said.
He also worked as a manager for a Peter Bay villa.
After attending the long-closed Horace Mann School in John’s Folly, Guy Benjamin School and Julius E. Sprauve School, Matthias went off every day to St. Thomas to attend Eudora Kean High School. Following graduation, he started his work career with a job as a gas attendant for the Public Works Department. He moved on to be a heavy equipment operator, eventually opening his own business.
Along the way, he got his captain’s license, which is what led him to the career in water sports.
For now he’s happy to be at Fire Service. He’s moved up the ranks and holds an associate’s degree in fire science from Keiser University in Florida. Matthias is now the corporal in charge of his shift at the Coral Bay fire station.
That said, he’d like to again open his own business.
“Maybe watersports. I like the ocean,” he said.
