When Matthew L. Tripp '96-'97 joined the Professional Ambulance Service this fall, he knew he'd be bandaging wounds and putting patients on stretchers.

But he didn't expect to be digging fingers out of mashed potatoes.

"There was this employee in a restaurant in Harvard Square," Tripp says of a recent medical emergency. "One of the cooks got his hand caught in a potato-masher; there was mashed-potato and blood all over the wall."

"I had to fish around in the pink mashed-potatoes for his fingers. Luckily, they managed to reattach all of them," he adds.

Tripp, who will graduate in January, has been working as a paramedic at the ambulance service 24 hours a week this fall, while writing an honors thesis in social anthropology.

"He's someone that's getting right in the middle of the blood and the beer and is doing great work," says Bill C. Mergendahl, operations director of the ambulance service.

A number of other students, though not professional paramedics like Tripp, are also riding with ambulances and helping to provide medical care on a voluntary basis.

These students see a different side of Cambridge--and of Harvard--as a result of their experiences.

Along for the Ride

Phillips Brooks House's "third rider" program--a joint effort between PBH and Professional Ambulance Service--allows Harvard volunteers to experience the life of a paramedic or emergency medical technician.

The Professional Ambulance Service, known as Pro, is a private emergency services provider located in Alewife, which supplies ambulance service for most of the medical emergencies in Cambridge.

Students participate in Pro through the third rider program, which lets them volunteer as assistants on Cambridge ambulances and see first-hand the medical emergencies that happen everyday in large cities like Boston.

The program, which has been in place for about five years, typically involves about 10 to 20 students, says program head Rod N. Bennett '97.

Bennett says most of the third riders are pre-meds, although anyone is welcome to join the program. Riders typically volunteer for a six to eight hour shift per week. The time commitment is discouraging for some people, he says, but volunteers need to work a long shift in order to see a significant number of calls.

"It's six hours, so it's kind of a pain, but once I get out there it's usually a lot of fun," says Stephen J. Lukasewycz '99.

Bennett, who has been involved with the program for three years but did not ride this semester because of medical school applications, says being a third rider hasn't required a huge time sacrifice.