GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A third-generation responder is now serving West Michigan. Thursday night, the family celebrated as one of their children graduated from paramedic school.
Elyzabeth Martinez's dad and grandfather both served on the Grand Rapids Fire Department. Now, she gets to work next to her father as a Life EMS paramedic.
Elyzabeth Martinez, who just recently graduated as a Life EMS, only needs to take her national test to become a full-time paramedic. But she's not new to the job.
“I’ve been lucky enough to get to run a couple of calls with my dad. And so that's always something that's really fun to be able to do with them,” Elyzabeth said.
This isn’t the first time Elyzabeth was with her dad at work. She's been stopping by her dad and grandfather's work since she was a baby.
Her grandfather, who is now retired, is thrilled to see his granddaughter serve as a first responder.
“I feel very proud, very proud of what she's doing. She could have done anything else you wanted but she chose to be a first responder,” Elyzabeth’s grandfather, Pablo Martinez, said.
Elyzabeth never imagined being a first responder because her first dream was to be a cosmetologist.
“Until COVID started. At the beginning of COVID, I started watching, you know, shows on TV, and being stuck at home on lockdown on a call like that. That looks really cool. I'm like, You know what? Why not? Let me try it. And I ended up falling in love with it,” Elyzabeth told FOX17.
Her father admitted that it caught him off guard to see the career change but was proud of her decision.
“I had never thought that even growing up all the way up into high school and this was kind of a surprise when she said, Hey, I'm going to try to do this thing and I'm going to this EMT class,” Elyzabeth’s father Joaquin Martinez said.
A moment Elyzabeth won’t ever forget while in the field training was helping someone deliver a baby. It’s a call that neither her dad nor grandfather had been called out to in their decades of service.
“Absolutely very proud of her. She's done a great job. She's been very dedicated to this,” Joaquin said.
Elyzabeth joined the largest Life EMS paramedic graduating class, with 22 new graduates, right when there's a growing need for more responders out there serving west Michigan.
“We're very blessed because we've got a great pipeline happening with the reputation of our training programs, we have a lot of people interested in (it),” Life EMS Mark Meijer said.
