Emma Pearsall the latest in her family to become a Cutchogue Fire Department EMT

Looking back on her childhood, Emma Pearsall still remembers her father’s many noble but failed attempts to sneak out of the house without disturbing her.

“I would be in my bed, 2 a.m., 4 a.m., and you could just hear the pager go off in his room,” she recalled. “My mom would be like, ‘Ken, go back to sleep’ and he’d be like, ‘No, I have to go.’ You could hear his bedroom door open and he was trying to close it quietly, but it never was. It would always wake me up … He would run downstairs. You could hear his car pulling out of the driveway. I would always be like, ‘Wow, I wish I could do that.’”

Now, at age 17, Emma is doing just “that,” responding to her community’s calls for help as a certified emergency medical technician. The roles are now reversed in her home, but discretion has gone completely out the window, as Emma deliberately wakes her father at 2 a.m. to accompany her on her calls. Having received her state certification last month through a summer course at Stony Brook University that covers six months worth of material in three and then administers written and practical exams, she still has another EMT, her father, accompany her. 

“I’m not completely independent on calls yet, I’ll still go with someone,” she said. “But the chief said that when I feel comfortable enough to be by myself [I can]. I think I’m getting there. I think one more good call and I’ll be good.”

The Cutchogue Fire Department has been a second home to Emma throughout her life, from volunteering to lend a hand during their annual chicken barbecue fundraiser to joining their junior firefighter program at age 12. Plus, her father, Lt. Ken Pearsall, captain of the department’s rescue squad, and her grandmother, Catherine Pearsall, who was certified as an EMT, have been active members in the department throughout her entire life. The department has seen its fair share of families whose members serve across multiple generations. However, it seems no one can remember three generations of active members who could all respond to calls together. This has already occurred for the Pearsalls , when they responded to a call of someone reporting “vague symptoms,” as Ms. Pearsall described it, which they learned was internal bleeding. Calls involving rookie and veteran partners are learning opportunities and refreshing experiences for all parties.

“What’s exciting is when we have any new student, they’re learning the freshest information, especially if they’re studying hard and memorizing everything,” Mr. Pearsall said. “They are forcing us to answer questions.”

“I keep him on his toes,” Emma added.

Mr. Pearsall joined the Cutchogue Fire Department after moving here in 1997 during his senior year of high school. 

“We all join for different reasons,” he explained. “I always wanted to serve the community, but here, I didn’t really know anybody at the time in this town. So joining the fire department was a great way to help and make new friends at the same time.”

After a few months as an active member, he convinced his mother, then working as a nurse practitioner, to volunteer as well.

“It’s so funny because I had the same experience [as Emma] but from a different perspective,” Ms. Pearsall said of what brought her into the fire department. “The middle of the night, he’s 17, the pager goes off and he’s running out the door at two in the morning. He woke up the whole family, the same thing.”

Emma said she has responded to approximately 15 calls and put her studies to the test since enrolling in her summer certification course.

“Some stuff I have done is helped at a heart attack call and the patient had a good outcome,” she said of her time as both a training and certified EMT. “I’ve helped elderly people who have fallen and broken their pelvises or hips, and then we use a pelvic binder to bind their hip back together, which is really painful for the patient. But once it’s in place, it gives them some comfort and it protects their internal organs from any further damage. We’ve had different patients with psychotic needs who we take to [Stony Brook] Eastern Long Island Hospital.”

While most of her calls have ended on a positive note, the young woman has already felt the weight of losing a patient she wished she could help. 

“She had cancer, and I was [one of the last people] she saw before she passed away,” she recalled. “It was just nice to give her some hope. Even though she couldn’t talk to me because of the state she was in, she smiled. It was nice to see her happy in her last moments.”

While responding to calls for help can be both physically and emotionally draining, Emma’s experienced father knew she could handle it, especially having grownup around not only him and her grandmother, but also her mother, who worked as a nurse at Stony Brook and St. Charles hospitals for many years before becoming a nurse at Southold Elementary School. Mr. Pearsall said he was worried about Emma “just slightly, but not enough to not support her. I wanted to support her and I was confident that those risks are controlled and mitigated enough.”

She may not be old enough to vote, but Emma will be ready to serve her community as she finishes her final year at Mattituck High School. While she leaves her trusty Motorola pager in her Jeep during class, she still checks the text messages alerts that come through. When she’s not in school, or working at the fashion boutique Mint on Love Lane or for By Hand Catering, she will drop whatever she is doing and roll out.

“I’m allowed to leave from school, but I choose not to because I take AP classes and I’m really focused on my schoolwork. But I’ve left from the gym early, if I’m with my boyfriend I’ll leave him. I’ll be like, ‘Sorry Carlos, I have to go,’ and I’ll be on the ambulance in five minutes. I’ll get out of bed at two in the morning. Really, it’s whenever I have free time, or time that I see as sacrificable to go help someone else.”

Emma is currently waiting to receive college acceptance letters. If she gets into her top choice, Endicott College in Beverly, Mass., to study nursing, she’ll be away from the Cutchogue Fire Department for extended periods. However, she said she will try to volunteer at a firehouse close to campus. Like her mother and grandmother, she wants to work full time in the medical field. And like her grandmother and father, she plans to be an active CFD member for quite a while after completing her studies.

“I plan to stay here for probably the majority of my life, and I’ll definitely do the fire department for my whole life, too,” Emma said. “I love my community. I’m gonna be here forever.”