When the call went out from New York for volunteers to travel to the epicenter of the pandemic in the fight against the novel coronavirus, Paul Cary raised his hand from 1,800 miles away.
From the moment Cary arrived, before they were even settled, “Paul just kept asking, when are we going out in the field?” said Ambulnz CEO Stan Vashovsky.
Cary would spend his final days in the field on the streets of New York, tending to coronavirus patients in the back of his ambulance as it raced from hospital to hospital.
He worked for nearly three weeks, until he fell ill with the virus himself.
Cary, a 66-year-old father of two and grandfather of four, died of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, on April 30 after spending several days on a ventilator at a New York hospital.
On Sunday, processions of ambulances and firetrucks honored Cary in both New York and Colorado, his casket arriving at a Denver funeral home draped in an American flag. New York EMS workers and a state health official paid their respects to Cary’s family in person.
His family said in a statement they were devastated by his loss, but that they knew Cary “risked his own health and safety to protect others and left this world a better place.”
“We are at peace knowing that Paul did what he loved and what he believed in, right up until the very end,” the family said.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D), speaking at a news conference in New York on Friday, vowed to erect a special memorial to honor Cary’s sacrifice, saying he and the city would be forever grateful that Cary answered the call of duty from so far away.
He is among countless first responders and health-care workers who have traveled to New York in one of its darkest hours, de Blasio said, but while “so many people came to help … Paul gave his life for us, and we’re going to honor him in a particular way.”
“There’s something particularly painful when someone does the right thing, when a fellow American comes from across the country to try and help the people in New York City, and while working to save lives here, gives his own life,” the mayor said. “It’s very painful, it’s heroic, it’s something we honor, but it’s very, very painful that we’ve lost this good man.”
Paul Cary, son of a Denver firefighter, was born on May 15, 1953, and spent his life in Colorado, his daughter-in-law, Gina Yeater-Cary, told The Washington Post. Inspired by his father’s lifelong public service, Cary followed in his footsteps and served with the Aurora Fire Rescue for 32 years. He always “epitomized what it means to be a firefighter,” serving the people of Aurora with empathy in their most dire moments until his retirement in 2010, his former captain, Ray Barnes, said during a ceremony Sunday night.
But Cary didn’t really “retire,” Yeater-Cary said. He just cut down his hours, trading the double duty of a firefighter-medic for ambulance work at private companies, she said.
“I used to joke that he just went from working full time to part time," she said. "It’s one of those things when you have the drive and you have the heart for it, you can’t not answer it. It’s just something you have to do.”
That’s why everyone in the family understood why he had to go to New York. He made the decision with little hesitation, undeterred by the risks, Yeater-Cary said, and his family fully supported him.
At the time he and his Ambulnz colleagues left Colorado for New York, the city was experiencing 911 call volume that rivaled or eclipsed that of 9/11 — “the highest number of 911 calls in the history of New York City,” de Blasio said Friday. “We needed every hand on deck.”
Ambulnz was part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency relief program for New York EMS workers and hospitals, transferring covid-19 patients from hospitals at capacity to other hospitals with more room. In between, they also answered 911 calls across the city; Cary and his crew from Colorado were based in the Bronx, his colleague, Royce Davis, told The Post.
Davis, 50, said that Cary was the elder and mentor figure of the group, with more experience than most of the paramedics who came to New York. They shared dinners together after long hours in the throes of the crisis, preferring to talk about kids and grandchildren rather than the horrors of what they saw each day, Davis said. Cary was quiet compared to the younger crowd, he said, but his devotion radiated widely.
Just before he fell ill, on April 19 or 20, Cary signed up for a second deployment in New York with Ambulnz.
“His love for this job, and his love for serving people, kept reminding me of why I’m doing it,” Davis said.
On Sunday, Davis served as a pallbearer in Cary’s procession — an astounding miles-long send-off organized by Cary’s colleagues at Ambulnz and the New York City Fire Department, which treated the Coloradan as one of their own.
Honoring fallen Colorado paramedic Paul CaryA procession and ceremony honoring fallen Colorado paramedic Paul Cary, who died Thursday after treating COVID-19 patients in New York City: https://bit.ly/35sHyr0
Posted by FOX31 KDVR.com on Sunday, May 3, 2020
The procession of dozens of ambulances started at a Staten Island funeral home and advanced through New York, people cheering from the sidewalks or standing at attention at the end of their driveways, Davis said.
Cary’s ambulance pulled onto the tarmac at Newark Liberty International Airport, where dozens of EMS workers saluted. The bag pipes blared “Amazing Grace,” while Davis and the other pallbearers carefully lifted Cary off the ambulance and toward his last flight, which would arrive by nightfall in Denver, where still dozens more EMS vehicles awaited him.
Cary’s family, dearest colleagues and friends stood outside the Denver funeral home silently, watching Cary’s procession arrive at around 10 p.m.
On behalf of the state of New York, a state health department official, Steven Dziura, took the lectern and said, “We could all be a little more like Paul.”
“Paul raised his hand. At a time when the nation was in crisis, and the world was unknown, Paul raised his hand,” he said, before presenting the state flag to Cary’s son, Christopher Cary, who broke down in tears in a long embrace with the New Yorker.
The brief ceremony came to a close as an Ambulnz EMS worker held up a dispatch radio, paging all Colorado fire and EMS first responders.
“This is a last call for Paramedic Paul Cary," he said. “Dispatch will now show Paramedic Cary out of service but not out of our hearts and memories." He wished Cary godspeed on his final journey before promising, “We have the watch from here.”
