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Emergency medicine, search and rescue in particular, has always been an interest of mine. So I joined up.

In the middle nineties I was a member of the Bay Area Mountain Rescue Unit, BAMRU.

I received my Emergency Medical Technican - EMT - certification and my Amateur (Ham) Radio license around the same time. I used my skills as medic and communicator (to use the Red Cross parlance) at many special events, such as the 1996 San Francisco Bay to Breakers.

At that time I took many classes at the Mountain Medicine Institute, which held its classes on Treasure Island. Around this time an email buddy, Keith Conover of the Wilderness EMS Institute, presented A Wilderness EMS Medical Kit. My dog-eared copy of Medicine for Mountaineer rarely left my side during these years. I was leading trips into Yosemite and the high country, including a wonderful half-week trip to the top of El Capitan.

In the late ninetees I was a member of the San Francisco Neighborhood Emergency Response Team, NERT. While I lived in the Haight-Ashbury I was the coördinator of the Haight-Ashbury Emergency Response Team, or HAERT. Yuk, yuk.