Slippery Rock paramedics bike across East Coast
Last weekend, paramedics Zane Grimm, Nico Soler and Brian Shaw of Slippery Rock Volunteer Fire Company and Rescue Team embarked on a multi-city, seven-day bikeathon honoring Emergency Medical Service personnel. The National EMS Memorial Bike Ride, comprised of different routes along the East Coast, had its starting point in Boston and concluded yesterday in Washington, D.C.
The annual event, which spanned approximately 489 miles, is part of five long-distance memorial bike rides nationwide.
Soler is a prehospital business development specialist with the Allegheny Health Network and a paramedic with Butler Memorial Hospital. Shaw also is president of the National EMS Memorial Bike Ride. Both Soler and Shaw are returnees, having navigated the journey in previous years.
Grimm, 22, is a first-year participant.
“I bought a bike on Friday, got on a plane on Saturday and I’m in Boston the next day,” he said.
“They’re very invested in this ride, which is awesome,” Chief Ryan Hanchosky said.
For the duration of the bike ride, Grimm, Shaw and Soler each carried a set of dog tags with the name of an EMS member who died in the line of duty last year. Bike ride participants will meet the families of deceased paramedics during the 2023 National EMS Weekend of Honor in July.
“During a couple of our stops this year, we actually rode through towns of some of the honorees, and we were able to present the dog tags early because their families are able to meet us at the cities,” Soler said.
While the bike ride and the upcoming National EMS Weekend of Honor in Arlington, Va., commemorate paramedics and first responders, a permanent memorial has yet to be built.
“There’s a forever police memorial. There’s a fire memorial. But there is not an EMS memorial,” Soler said.
“Our hope is that later we’ll be able to establish a permanent memorial resting place so we can put up all these names every year.”
Grimm is riding for Jonathian Myers, a first responder from Cumberland County who died of complications from COVID-19 after he was exposed to a patient with the virus.
“I unfortunately had a lot of loved ones die from COVID. EMS was very — I feel — underrepresented during COVID,” Grimm said.
“The nurses got all the good gowns, good masks, gloves, things like that. So working during the pandemic, I felt neglected almost because we got all the crappy equipment.”
While he has worked in different healthcare settings, Grimm said his true passion lies in working in an ambulance, although paramedics often have to think — and work — quickly on their feet in widely varying conditions.
“They’re doing it all in the back of a box in all weather,” Grimm said. “In the snow. There’s no heat. You’re by yourself the whole time. You don’t have a team of doctors. You don’t have a surgeon by your side, or nurses to help you.”
With the bike ride completed and hundreds of miles behind him, Grimm returned to work as soon as his plane landed.
He plans to attend the bike ride again next year, cycling with dozens of EMS members once more.
“It’s a brotherhood and a sisterhood between us,” Grimm said.
