He received his emergency medical technician training at Moultrie Technical College and did his paramedic training at Val-Tech. His parents live in Tifton, and he still commutes from Tifton. His father is “a third-generation accountant,” and his mother works for a hardware distribution company. He decided not to be a fourth-generation accountant because he didn’t want to deal with all the math.

Asked to recall some of his more interesting calls, he said they all run together after a while, but one or two stand out in his mind. He has worked two wrecks involving log trucks since he started, both of which resulted in fatalities. In one such call, he said a motorgrader pulled out in front of a log truck and the truck caught fire, resulting in the death of the truck driver.

His said his most interesting call had nothing to do with the EMS side of the job.

“We were called to back up a fire at Care Environmental. They dispose of different types of waste and one of the things they do is aerosol cans. The sway truck full of aerosol cans caught fire and we just sat back and watched the cans blow a hundred feet in the air.”

He said they get a lot of off-the-wall calls. It’s not unusual, for example, for people who are taking a bath to play with the water spigot in the tub with their foot, he said. They occasionally get calls to help someone who got their big toe stuck in the spigot.

One time, Henderson said, an older gentleman had taken a shower and afterward sat down in a metal-frame garden chair with the plastic strips. When he tried to get up, the chair got up with him and wouldn’t let go. He spent 14 hours in that chair. Another call involved a 60-year-old gentleman who broke some ribs when he was thrown from a horse he was trying to break. None of the calls are “textbook calls,” he said.

Some of the key attributes included in the nominations for these award recipients are attitude, teamwork, dedication, loyalty, ethics, customer service, patient-care skills, interpersonal relations, dependability, personal conduct, initiative, integrity, diversity, communications, efficiency and effectiveness.