University of Delaware
Office of Public Relations
UpDate - Vol. 16, No. 30, May 8

            Employee's hobby is a matter of life and death
     
     It's 3 o' clock in the morning and you're rushing to a
man's house because he's had a toothache for three days, or
you've just spent part of an afternoon wrapping an elderly
woman's television set in tin foil to keep the dangerous
rays from harming her, or for two hours, you're pounding on
the walls of a house looking for a cat who may or may not be
there.
     Even though these experiences are rare, they did happen
to Kathy Domorod, a part-time volunteer
firefighter/emergency medical technician (EMT) for the Five
Points Fire Company and a full-time staff assistant in the
Receipts, Real Estate and Risk Management office.
     Last year alone, Domorod, who also is station
secretary, responded to over 200 fire/rescue alarms and 300
ambulance calls as a volunteer for the fire company located
in New Castle County near Richardson Park. In 1996, she was
named Five Points Top Responder of the Year and Member of
the Year, becoming the first woman in the 76-year history of
the volunteer fire department to earn that honor. That same
year, the New Castle County Ambulance Association gave her
the Ambulance Attendant of the Year award.
     "I practically grew up in a firehouse," Domorod said
with pride. She married James Domorod, also a volunteer
firefighter, and her two sons are volunteers.
     It's easy to pinpoint the start of Domorod's desire to
help others. When she was 6 years old, her father and
brother drowned in a accident in the Chesapeake and Delaware
Canal. Her mother was touched by how hard the volunteers
with the Port Penn, Delaware City and Holloway Terrace fire
departments fought to save their lives, and when she
recovered from the trauma of her husband's and son's deaths,
she joined the Talleyville Fire Company's ladies auxiliary.
     Domorod got involved, too. She took an ambulance
training course when she was 16 and later married a
volunteer firefighter. She only stopped running rescue
missions when she started having babies. But, the moment her
children were old enough to take care of themselves, she
went back.
     She's completed training and certification as an
emergency medical technician, and while she likes being part
of the team that puts out fires, she said, her first love is
working as an EMT.
     "My first run was for someone with a broken back," she
recalls, but "I've had my share of cardiac arrest calls."
One that she especially remembers was a 30-year old man they
couldn't save.
     Her teams are called to help people who are victims of
murder, suicide, robbery, assault and accidents. When asked
how she stays dedicated and enthusiastic in the face of
tragedy and death, she quietly said, "I have a very strong
belief in God."
     She also is careful to concentrate on what can be
fixed-the physical- and avoids getting too personally
involved with people. "The physical we can do something to
help. It's the emotional that's harder to take," she said.
     When she works as a firefighter, her duties have little
to do with people. "I am the hydrant person; unless we're
really pressed, I don't go into burning buildings," Domorod
said. But her husband and sons do.
     She often responds to calls with them, and she
remembers one in particular, at the Perkins' Pancake House
on Maryland Avenue. When they arrived, the building was
engulfed in flames, so she helped set up a triage area to
treat firefighters or other victims. When they finished
setting up the medical unit, she began watching them work
the fire. She noticed one firefighter on a 100-foot aerial
ladder against the building who was surrounded by smoke,
flames and sparks. When he finally climbed down, she
realized it was her son.
     When discussing her volunteer work, her only criticism
is directed to motorists.
     "It's like open season on us. They dart all over the
place," she said. Sometimes, volunteers even have trouble
getting in and out of the fire station. She complained that
even when the trucks are blasting their sirens, stopping at
a red light and in plain view, cars don't move out of the
way. "It hampers our response time."
     One way to avoid traffic is to fly over it, which may
be one of the reasons Domorod's dream is to work with a
Medevac unit. "What I'd really like to do is be a flight
medic," she said.
     She had some firsthand experience with Medevac units
when she flew with the state police helicopter to bring a
patient from Nanticoke to the University of Maryland Shock
Trauma Center, and when she helped take a stabbing victim
with a punctured lung from Wilmington to Christiana
Hospital.
     No matter what else is in Domorod's future, it is
certain rescue work will be part of it. "You hear stories
about ghosts in firehouses," Domorod says, "I have such a
love for all of this, that when I go, that's how I want to
end up-wandering around some firehouse for    eternity."
                                           -Barbara Garrison