Greg Shuping was 19 years old when he launched his emergency services career in his native Burke County. The son of a volunteer firefighter, Shuping had spent most of his life hanging around the firehouse, at least when he wasn’t busy exploring nearby Linville Gorge. 

As the afternoon sun sank in the wintry sky Jan. 15, a line of first responders stretched 50-deep outside the front door of the Cullowhee Recreation Center, each person waiting their turn to participate in the first mass COVID-19 vaccination clinic to take place in Jackson County. 

It was the fall of 2019, and Bill Zimmerman had just hopped in a truck with other members of the Haywood County Wilderness Search and Rescue Team in response to one of the 21 deployments the crew handled that year. 

“Somebody goes, ‘We don’t even have a gas card. We don’t even have money to put into the truck to get up to the mountain,’” Zimmerman recalled. 

A longtime leader in the Glenville-Cashiers Rescue Squad is facing criminal charges and a civil suit claiming he used lies and deception to position his construction company for a $2 million job building a new rescue station. 

When Asheville Fireman Mark Jameson returned to the fire station after responding to a particularly difficult call, the only thing that lifted his spirits was seeing Denali wagging her tail with excitement upon his return. 

Justin Mitchell grew up like many young men in the South. He had a big family and attended church. His partner described him as southernly polite and chivalrous. Yet, he was anything but ordinary. He had been an EMS paramedic since 2007, he held a bachelor’s degree in occupational health and safety and served as a privately contracted flight medic in Iraq. Everything changed for Justin on March 31 when he was told he had previously transported Haywood County’s first positive COVID-19 patient. 

National Emergency Medical Services Week is May 17-23, and in the midst of a global pandemic the timing resonates more this year than at any other moment in recent memory. What these men and women do — whether it be EMTs, those in the medical field, firemen and the police — has never been more essential to helping our society maintain some semblance of normalcy and order. 

On the morning of March 26, the Haywood County Board of Commissioners became the latest public body in North Carolina to issue restrictions on movement in an effort to halt the spread of the Coronavirus Pandemic.

Fire education in Jackson County will soon get a leg up following county commissioners’ vote Dec. 17 to appropriate $169,434 for a Smart Fire Safety Training Trailer. 

Of all the victims of the nation’s opioid epidemic, probably the most overlooked are the municipalities that have to expend taxpayer-funded resources to deal with the problem.