For many students in the St. Stephen’s & St. Agnes community, the mandatory 40 service hours that are needed to graduate seem like a daunting undertaking. These service hours are to be completed by the first day of senior year and as of right now only 47 of the juniors have completed their required hours and only five freshmen have them done. In contrast, Declan Griffey ‘26 is one of the few people who had not only completed the mandatory 40 hours, but surpassed them freshman year. As of right now, Griffey has “an astonishing” 1,175 service hours.
Griffey is in his fourth year volunteering as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) for the Bethesda Chevy Chase Rescue Squad. Director of Service Learning and Community Engagement Mr. Yee says with confidence that Griffey is definitely the only student he has known to put so many hours into one organization.
Despite the fact that being an EMT was a useful way to go above and beyond his service hour requirement, Griffey says he became an EMT because “I’ve been interested in medicine and when the opportunity came up to join them [EMTs] as a member, I kind of took it.” Additionally, Griffey says that there is no way for anyone to become an EMT solely because of service hours, explaining “they won’t let you. They’re super strict about who they let in as high schoolers. There’s only ten of us that are high speeds [the EMTs riding in the ambulances] that get chosen to do it for my station.”
Before Griffey could even begin the rigorous work associated with being an EMT, he had to go through an extensive amount of challenging training as well. Griffey explains that, “you have to be both nationally and state certified. So my class took about 250 hours and then you have to complete the testing.”
After completing his training, Griffey began to go on official rides about once a week from either 6pm-7am or 6pm-7am, giving him up to 13 service hours a week during the school year and even more during the summer. Although he does not plan to pursue being an EMT as a career, Griffey does plan to continue volunteering as an EMT throughout college.
When asked what he liked about being an EMT, Griffey responded, “you meet a ton of cool people from different backgrounds. But it is also rewarding to help people and it gets you good hands-on experience in medicine.”
A memorable experience that Griffey described from one of his rides as an EMT, “my first time I had to help with a severe reaction was with a young kid. He got stung by a bee, didn’t know that he was allergic, and his mom just handed me her kid. I think he was four.” He emphasized the fact that “they put their kids’ life in your hands, and it’s very rewarding.
