Exceptional care and quick decision-making by first responders changed a family’s life forever.

Eleven years ago, ambulance, fire and police personnel in Indianapolis were dispatched to a home for an injured person.

That’s a very vague description compared to what they soon would encounter.

Will Renkin, who was 6 at the time, was playing with a 7-year-old girl and a 12-year-old girl upstairs in his home. He was bouncing on a yoga ball on a couch when he went airborne over the railing, falling approximately 15 feet and landing on a laminate floor with concrete underneath.

Once first responders arrived, one of them took the time to comfort the two young girls who witnessed the accident and their adult babysitter, who used to be a registered nurse, and talk to them as fellow personnel tended to Will.

An experienced member of the crew, Rick Allgood, spoke up when a new paramedic said they would take Will to the nearest hospital and noted it would be better to travel a little farther to the trauma center at Riley Hospital for Children.

“For him to do that literally saved his life,” said Neti Redelman, training and quality assurance coordinator for Jackson County Emergency Medical Services.

“This crew was so awesome to (Will) and en route to Riley within 10 minutes. That’s our goal, so kudos, kudos to them,” she said. “That’s another reason that he turned out so well.”

During a recent audit and review at Schneck Medical Center in Seymour, Redelman presented the crew with a Jackson County EMS award. Allgood and Ken Harden were the only crew members available to be there, and they were joined by Will’s parents, Marcy and Tom Renkin.

Over the years, the first responders have stayed in touch with the family, which is unique because many times, once they go their separate ways after incidents, they may not know the outcome of the people they helped.

“Every once in awhile, you go on a call like this, and no amount of pay in the world can really replace the relationship you develop with the patient, the family,” said Allgood, who is now captain of EMS quality management for the Indianapolis Fire Department.

Allgood said he has been able to see Will grow up in pictures on Facebook, and Marcy said it became a family tradition to deliver doughnuts or pizza to the fire station each year around the anniversary of the accident. One time, the firefighters made them dinner instead.

“The way that the crew and everyone put us at ease was really, really amazing,” Marcy said. “I just admire you guys for what you do, and it’s amazing.”

Considering the story shows how first responders can and should work together, Redelman thought it would provide some inspiration to her fellow Jackson County EMS employees and other local first responders who attended the audit and review. Plus, it was a good, positive message for the holidays.

A twist to the story, though, is the truth about what really happened didn’t come out until a few years later.

Initially, the two young girls who witnessed the incident told first responders Will was climbing on the outside of the staircase railing, got to the top, lost his balance and fell.

They later confessed what really happened.

After landing on the floor, Will experienced immediate but temporary loss of consciousness. He then began to groan and try to move, but his babysitter’s nursing instincts came into play and she held him still so he wouldn’t roll over.

Meanwhile, her husband called 911, and Redelman said within 4 minutes, a Wishard Hospital ambulance and an IFD firetruck were at the home.

The first responders only knew there was an injured person. They didn’t have any idea it involved a 6-year-old with a traumatic brain injury.

Will had a depressed skull fracture, dried blood around his mouth and irregular respirations.

As the crew tended to Will, Redelman said a police officer took the young girls and babysitter aside and sat with them and told them what was going on, keeping them as calm as possible.

“(The babysitter) said how easy would it have been for them to walk in, push them aside, take the patient, get going because that would have been practical, right? But she said, ‘Not this crew,’” Redelman said.

“She said, ‘Every one of them took the time to explain things that they were doing. They were working while they were explaining. … How important it was that they treated me like a person and not a bad guy, and they didn’t discard me. I was an important part of the team,’” Redelman said. “That was super important to her. This was 11 years later, and she was telling me this like it was yesterday.”

In the ambulance on the way to Riley, Will experienced decorticate posturing, brain herniating and seizure activity, and the crew used its training and experience to provide the necessary care to keep him alive.

At the hospital, a scan revealed Will had a comminuted left frontal temporal skull fracture, a small subarachnoid hemorrhage, a right front subdurral hematoma and a vertical fracture of a temporal bone. He wound up having a shunt in his forehead to drain fluid and was put into an induced coma.

By the time he arrived in the hospital, Will’s parents were able to make it there from Floyds Knobs, where they had been on a marriage retreat. They remained at his bedside every day unsure who their son would be when he woke up or what his brain activity would be.

Fortunately, everything the first responders and the trauma team did allowed him to wake up and eventually be able to go through rehabilitation and recover.

Even at the hospital, the babysitter said a couple of people from the crew stayed with her and asked if she needed anything or had any questions.

”I think sometimes in EMS, we kind of get disconnected because we take care of these patients over and over and over. We drop them off at the ER, and we don’t always see the impact we have on a family,” Redelman said. “So remember, when we are on these calls, the way we treat our patients, the way we treat our families, it really, really does matter.”