PETE PELKEY
Economics Teacher
I started the interview by asking him, “What’s the craziest thing that has ever happened to you?”
He responded, “You have to define crazy. Normal people will say they were late for an event or something, but my life has been insane. I was the only white person homeless in South Central LA. The cops would knock on my car window at two o'clock in the morning to check that I didn’t have heroin marks on my arms. I was going to paramedic school at the time. That's a little odd, but for me that’s normal. That was just how my life rolled.”
“Tell me more about that,” I said.
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“I decided I wanted to be a paramedic when I was in high school. There was a show on TV called ‘Emergency’ with two hot looking firemen. And they picked up babes every time. Then they went to a hospital and flirted with nurses. I went, 'That is the job for me.' But you know what? When I got to be a paramedic, I realized that sick people are not hot. And nurses? They're more interested in cops and firemen and doctors than they are paramedics. But I liked other aspects of the job. It was kind of fun.
You gotta choose the alley you're sleeping in well. I was in paramedic school, and I was working with the fire department, and I'd be on a 24-hour shift. Then after my 24-hour shift, I jumped in my car and went to an alley someplace to sleep for as long as I possibly could. Then one day during my shift, I got called into that same alley I'd been sleeping in a couple of nights before, and somebody got shot and killed in that alley. So I had to go in that alley to make sure this boy was dead. I needed to find a better alley to sleep in.
I was my parents' least favorite child. I was the one that they didn't know what to do with. I was not good in high school. I had a terrible GPA. I had a 1.9 GPA graduating high school. I wasn't going to college. I didn't want to go to college. I wasn't interested in college. Going back and going for more schooling after high school was traumatizing. I was never going to set foot in a high school again. Be careful what you try to avoid.
So I became an ambulance driver, then I figured out how to become an EMT. Then the paramedics started to come into Santa Clara County. I was dating this other ambulance driver and she got into paramedic school. She goes, 'Honey, why don't you go down with me,' as if we were going to be in a relationship by the time we get down there, but we didn't know that at the time. So I went down and took the test, scored high on the test and got accepted to the paramedic school. We did break up at the time; she was in the class and we almost never talked. But that's a different story.
On the first day, I was going to go sleep in a hotel because I had money. I had saved up all the money myself. But my girlfriend's friend had met this guy from our paramedic school, so she said to live with him. He was just a mess. He ended up cheating me out of a bunch of money. I ended up buying all the food and paying the rent for several months. So I ended up depleting my funds for two people. And then he went to the landlord and said I was breaking into cars, and I ended up getting kicked out of the place. Now, I didn't have a lot of money and I either [had] to quit paramedic school and come back to Sunnyvale and tell my parents 'Yep, I failed another thing' or I could just live in my car for a month. I knew I could do it, so I did.
I graduated from paramedic school top of my class, baby. Then I came back to Sunnyvale. I should have been an LA fireman. LA Fire wanted to hire me. But I don't like firemen very much. I don't like cops. They were very racist and very sexist. It was the ‘80s. I'm sure it's a kinder genera[tion]. No it's not, let's be honest. We have some issues in America we need to deal with. So I got a job as a paramedic back up here.
Nothing is normal. I've delivered two babies. Those are fun. You just catch them so they don't hit the floor, basically. The mom does all the work; I'm just gonna catch this kid. Throw some water in your hands and grab it.
When you save somebody, and you don't save them very often, but when you actually save somebody's life, I guarantee your feet don't touch the ground for a week. It is the highest high you could ever have. And you just go 'I did that. It was me. That was me.' You know? It was a great experience. No drug could ever give you that kind of rush.”