“Be still. Get down.”
Donnie Brown recalled these panicked words from years ago, spoken by a strange man crouching in the woods off Highway 421. Brown, on a call for the Yadkin County Rescue Squad, would soon realize the man was a paranoid Vietnam War veteran fearing an enemy attack. It was up to Brown to calm him and get him safely to his vehicle, which he did.
When the man stood up, Brown saw a loaded .357 revolver under him — raising the stakes of the moment.
Brown recalls this day vividly, noting how lucky he was to have been regarded as a friend rather than foe by the man in the woods. The man, in his traumatized state of paranoia, could have ended Brown’s life.
This was a psychological rescue — just another day’s work as a member of the Yadkin County Rescue Squad.
“Some people can do it, some people can’t,” Brown, who was an active member of the squad for 21 years, said.
Many may recognize the Yadkin County Rescue Squad by their ambulance presence at Friday night high school football games. The squad is often mistakenly equated to county EMS drivers, Jeff Hinshaw, the squad’s captain, said.
“We get mixed up all the time. People come here all the time to pay their ambulance service bill.” he said.
While the rescue squad does have ambulances, they are not the same as EMS. They aren’t the fire department or law enforcement either. Rescue squads act as backup for all three, as well as providing unique technical rescue services of their own — adhering to the simple goal of saving lives.
And Yadkin County’s own rescue squad recently celebrated 50 years of doing just that.
A ‘hodgepodge’
“Nobody really knows what to do with us,” Hinshaw said of the Yadkin County Rescue Squad.
The squad’s rescue services include vehicle extrication, rope rescue, confined space rescue, collapse and cave rescue, wilderness search, and water rescue — and in addition to their unique services, they interface with other emergency services as well.
The rescue squad acts as a backup for Yadkin County’s EMS, supplying ambulances when the county runs out and treating patients at the scene. Nearly everyone on the squad has a medical credential from the state of North Carolina, Hinshaw said.
“Our stripes are red, the county’s are orange. But at the end of day, an ambulance is an ambulance,” he said.
The rescue squad also assists the fire department. Around a dozen squad members are certified firefighters in addition to rescue technicians.
Additionally, the rescue squad interfaces with law enforcement, supplying equipment and manpower as needed.
The rescue squad has 35 volunteer members, with a part-time paid staff — a collection of individuals possessing a “hodgepodge” of talents and skills, Hinshaw said.
The concept of a rescue squad was born out of the rural southeast, Hinshaw said. Today, rescue squads don’t tend to exist outside of rural counties.
The Yadkin County Rescue Squad is funded by the county and supplemented by their annual gun raffle. The squad has hosted other fundraisers throughout its 50 year history, like the notorious BBQ chicken dinners and fruit selling at Christmas. They have also utilized funding from local businesses and organizations.
Nomadic beginnings
Nowadays, the Yadkin County Rescue Squad operates out of a central station in Yadkinville. But in the early days, the squad wasn’t nearly as settled.
The Yadkin County Rescue Squad’s humble beginnings go back to one man — Joe David (J.D) Welborn Jr.
J.D. was a wrecker driver for Dan Beck Ford, an old car dealership. A wrecker driver’s responsibilities include towing wrecked or disabled vehicles, changing flat tires, jump starting cars, and unlocking car doors.
“He was the rescue squad,” Brown said.
In 1972, J.D. started pooling together a group of around a dozen men that would become the founding members of the rescue squad. J.D., being familiar with local and state government, was able to officially charter the squad in September of 1973.
“Back then, you know, it was just a little tackle box with some tape and gauze in it really, band aids,” Brown said.
For a few months, the squad met in Yadkinville’s town hall. They moved around from the Yadkinville Fire Department to J.D.’s dad, Joe David Welborn Sr.’s, own car dealership Pioneer Chevrolet Company. At one point, they did their training at William Gentry Funeral Home.
“We just wandered from place to place,” Brown said.
But in the mid-seventies, the rescue squad moved into a building that was previously a furniture store — and it is here that the squad remains today.
The building has been renovated and added on to over the years, but Brown said it still has the original tile flooring.
‘It’s not all for the glory’
Working on the rescue squad takes a physical toll to be sure — hundreds of hours of training, weekly meetings, late night calls, and constant readiness to jump into action. And all of this on top of the volunteers’ regular day jobs.
But what’s more is the emotional toll — bearing witness to loss and traumatic events.
Now, nearly 50 years after J.D. started the Yadkin County Rescue Squad, volunteer rescuers, like Brown, have certainly borne witness to a lot.
“Anytime I hear a siren, it makes cold chills on me,” Brown said.
When the Siloam Bridge collapsed into the Yadkin River in February of 1975 — just a few years after the rescue squad’s creation — Brown was one of the men called to the scene. He searched throughout the entire night and following morning to find a little girl who had gone missing in the collapse. Eventually, he found her body by the river.
Brown’s own two children were around the same age as the little girl.
“[You drive] back home by yourself at three, four o’clock in the morning, and you cry all the way back home,” Brown said. “It hurts.”
Brown, who was captain from 1982-88, and Hinshaw, the squad’s current captain, understand the devotion and sacrifice needed for a job like theirs. But shrinking volunteer pools imply that the younger generations are less willing to make those sacrifices.
“Volunteerism is a dinosaur,” Hinshaw said.
Since the rescue squad’s early years, call volumes have gone up nearly tenfold. This increase in demand, combined with a decrease in volunteerism and an increase in costs, means that many rescue squads are struggling to make ends meet. If these services were to go away, the absence of their specialized training and equipment would likely be deeply felt in times of crisis.
But for now, Hinshaw said the Yadkin County Rescue Squad remains well-funded and well-manned as it heads into its next 50 years.
“It’s not all for the glory,” Brown said. “It’s just, you just got to have the willpower to say ‘I want to help somebody, and I’m going to do it.’”
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