VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — It's a labor of love, with no paycheck but an opportunity to pay it forward. The City of Virginia Beach is looking for more volunteers to help save lives.
For one longtime volunteer EMT, he was inspired to serve his city after a brush with death. Tony Pirrone says he has been a rescue squad member for Virginia Beach since he was given a second chance at life.
In 2007 Pirrone went into cardiac arrest after running a marathon. He says doctors tell him that he died before being brought back by EMTs. The experience made him want to become one himself.
Before COVID, the city had no shortage of volunteers. However, over the last couple of years, those numbers have gone down.
According to the city, if you're 18 and older you can apply to be a volunteer. There are more than 30 different departments that welcome participants to spend anywhere from two hours to twenty hours a week. Pirrone says that his department in particular is hurting.
Opportunity is available for volunteers to be behind a desk and even behind the wheel of an ambulance. Before volunteers can administer chest compressions, they'll be provided with hands-on training. Pirrone says volunteering has helped him find his purpose in life.
"I'll do it until the day I can't do it anymore. But it's kind of cool because I try to instill in the students that I have and the people that I meet the value of being a volunteer in the City of Virginia Beach is that we have ten rescue squads and any given day you could be helping anybody from picking up a little old lady and putting her back in her wheelchair to cardiac arrest and everything in between so I would have missed out on this life. So in a way, it was a good thing I died," explains Pirrone.
For more information on how to volunteer, click here.
