Outgoing EMS Chief reflects on three decades of service to Boston

(NECN: Ally Donnelly) – Richard Serino has been sounding the siren at Boston’s Emergency Management Services for more than three decades. Late Monday night the U.S. Senate confirmed Serino for a top post at the federal emergency management agency or fema. Before the week is out, Serino will step down as Boston’s EMS chief and move to Washington. NECN’s Ally Donnelly sat down with a man who — many would argue — has seen it all. Rich Serino is a slow packer. After all, he’s sifting through 35 years of memos and memories. As he prepares to step down as Chief of Boston’s Emergency Medical Services, he recalls his first day on the job. “You were given a Craftsman toolbox and told go to the ER and get your medical supplies. The back of the ambulance had a stretcher, no sheet, and an oxygen tank and that was it…and…good luck.” To understand his commitment you have to go back a little bit further. Serino was 13 or 14 when his family came upon an accident on Interstate 93. A car had flipped, people were thrown from the vehicle and trapped underneath it — Serino — just a child could only watch from his window. Standing six foot five, with a steady, sheepish grin – 55-year-old Serino doesn’t look the part of a tough-as-nails first responder. He was actually studying to be an elementary school teacher…but that accident he saw as a kid stuck with him, and in his late teens he started volunteering on the Boston ambulance squad. That was 1973. Serino was 19 years old — Boston EMS hadn’t even been formed yet. His first call, which took them an hour and a half to answer…there were only two ambulances for the whole city after all…was a woman having shortness of breath. “It was really a matter of the satisfaction that you made a difference, that you made the woman feel better taking her to the hospital, and I was hooked.” Hooked, but not necessarily seasoned. Take the call of a 27-year-old woman in cardiac arrest a few years later. “We were going to defibrillate her, to shock her. This is the old days, not like the automatic ones now. We had the paddles and we’re puttin’ em on her and every time we go to defibrillate her…it stopped working, it stopped working so like after the third time we realized we were so nervous we kept shutting it off.” The woman recovered. It was Serino’s first save. What would become Boston EMS started to come into its own in the 70s and Rich Serino was there every step of the way. Over the past three and a half decades he has delivered 35 babies…pressed the flesh with 7 presidents…and been at nearly every major event the city has seen….the Roslindale floods, the Democratic National Convention…World Series wins. “I’ve been in burning buildings, I’ve fallen through floors, I’ve been shot at, I’ve been stabbed.” Serino is not an outsider. He grew up in the city’s Codman Hill neighborhood and went to Saint Gregory’s Catholic School. He says it was surreal to be in the middle of Boston’s busing crisis in 1974. As Boston sought to desegregate public schools by bussing kids based on race, a racial firestorm exploded. Black kids were being bused into heavily Irish neighborhoods. Serino — embedded with the police worked the morning shift in South Boston and headed to Charlestown at night. In 1978 he saw the best of Boston during its historic blizzard. He had worked a day shift but it was snowing at a good clip so he decided to hang around for a couple of hours just in case. “We stayed and didn’t go home for…7 days.” About 27 inches of snow fell on Boston those February days — winds whipped at 80 miles and hour and snowdrifts were as high as 15 feet. Serino says city streets were so bad they had to commandeer snowmobiles from some people in West Roxbury. “City was beautiful actually. You’d get around and people were happy to see you, offering you everything…coffee, food, it was actually a great experience. I loved it.” A day he did not love came in the summer of 1987. A Vietnamese immigrant slaughtered a group of his relatives on Newport Street in Dorchester and Serino and his partner were early on scene… Serino saw a teen lying in the street and raced to get him to safety as the gunmen turned his fire on the first responders. “One police officer on scene with his gun aimed and firing his gun and our feet are off the ground like this as we’re running across the street…ducking.” Eight people died that day…two victims survived….the baby and the teen. Two years later Serino would be at a different shooting. There was a crew from a reality TV show doing an EMS ride along that day. There had been two good stories, but the crew missed getting video of both…so Serino stayed late as the crew tried to get something for their show. “It came in as a husband and wife shot — calls don’t usually come in that specific.” A man had called 911 on what was relatively new technology at the time, A cell phone. Charles Stuart claimed a black man had shot him and his seven months pregnant wife as they returned home from childbirth classes…but he couldn’t give police their location. A quick thinking dispatcher ordered cruisers in the area to turn on and off their sirens as police listened to Stuart’s cell phone connection. We took a left on St. Alphonsus and then a quick right and there they were right there. Serino was the first person on scene. “The two doors were open…I went around to Carole on the passenger side first, started taking care of her. She was not breathing at the time. She had significant wounds and so we were doing CPR and…” Unable to help Carole Dimaiti further, Serino turned his attention to Charles. “He was saying somebody shot him and the police were asking him what did he look like and stuff and he was giving all the information while we were taking care of him and we were really just focused more on his wounds.” The case captured national attention and outraged the African American community as a manhunt for the alleged shooter tore through the inner city. The case collapsed after Stuart’s brother fingered Charles Stuart himself as the shooter. “I was shocked. It didn’t appear from where the wounds were, how it all happened, what he said, how he said it. It didn’t appear that he was the one who had done it.” Three months later Charles Stuart killed himself… Leaping to his death from the Tobin Bridge before he could be questioned. Serino has seen his share of violence over the years…but nothing like the intensity of the 1990s when gang violence held the city hostage. “I think it was 152 homicides in one of the years…and I was at 101 of them.” Serino says they’d pick up teens in the street — gang members shot, stabbed — acting like they were the toughest and the meanest…but once the ambulance doors shut, they’d reveal themselves to be the children they were. “They asked for their mother and they’re amazed that it hurts, they’re amazed that it hurts.” Serino is above all else, a family man. His wife of 32 years is a nurse at Boston Medical Center…right next door to his office…he has three grown children, but through his crazy hours and beeping pager he has always made sure to cook for them, be the class room mom and coach their sports teams. Soon, Serino will step down to take the number two post at FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency — asked how he could pack up and leave a city he’s cared for so many years he says, actually….he’s not. Serino will commute. Spending the work week in D.C., and flying back to Boston for the weekend….back to home. (With videographer Mike Bellwin)