Portraiture
Firefighter
Dante Garofalo has been a Firefighter for 7 years, starting in high school he has responded to multiple calls varying in severity.
“There’s definitely been times where I’ve gotten frustrated. You know challenging calls. I get frustrated with calls… where there is the inability to produce a better outcome. There was a call that I responded to for a female. She had been working out on the treadmill and went into cardiac arrest. I arrived within 3 minutes of her downtime. She’d been in cardiac arrest for less than 4 minutes. Theoretically, she had a 55% chance of recovering from that.
We reestablished a pulse and got her up into the cath lab and she, unfortunately still succumbed to her injuries… We did everything we could. She got high quality CPR within 4 minutes of going down. Everything went exactly how the book said. She should have recovered and that was one that really frustrated me.
When we get called, it’s already bad. People are going to die and that’s not always something we can prevent. Understanding that and being able to take that punch… If you can’t move past your last call you wont be effective for the next one.”
Retail
I walked into my local GameStop on a whim that’s where I met 22 year-old Will Maldonado. It was his very first day on the job and he was very excited to be working at a place that sold games.
“Video games help me cope a lot. It gives the mind a distraction, so some people use it as an out, cuz you know the real world do get hard.”
Pastor
John Buskey, Pastor at 1st Baptist Manlius, has been an ordained pastor since 1989.
“It was between my sophomore and junior year of college, I grew up as a pastor’s kid and I made a vow to myself that I’d never be a pastor. But that summer, I just really got a strong impression in my heart that God was calling me to do this. I came up with excuse after excuse at the time and God made every excuse go away.
When my son was 3 years old he was diagnosed with hereditary pancreatitis, which is something off of my side of the family. I’ve watched my brother suffer through some debilitating times in the hospital, so I knew that it was a horrible disease. I struggled with, you know, ‘Alright God. Here I am, someone who has devoted time to following you, to pastor and minister for you, and this happened to my kid.’
You need to hang in there. When you’re going through what you feel is the pitch black, [you need to know] that there is always the morning. If you stay faithful, even when you don’t believe and feel God, that God will show up.”
EMT
“I had been cleared for one day… the first call I get is a 36-year-old overdose and we get there, and a million things are going through my head. I’ve never done this for real, by myself. On the way there is when I felt my weakest… what if I screw up, what if I freeze. I started to panic.
When I got there, my training kicked in. Unfortunately, she didn’t make it, but we did everything we could for her. We did it right.”
English Teacher
James Greene, an English teacher with Refugee Immigrant Self-Empowerment (RISE), loves helping people learn and grow.
With a penchant for teaching, James has taught in multiple countries abroad like Japan and China. RISE gives Greene the freedom to create his own curriculum and get to know his students, where he has been able to teach up to 450 people per class in a combination of in person and online classes.
Barber
“I guess when I went to prison was when I would say was the toughest for me… I don’t know if you want to say that though. Yeah, Prison was a hell of an experience. You see things from a different perspective, from the eyes of someone whose freedom is taken. If I could do it again, I’d do it differently, but it’s definitely made me tougher, more ambitious.”
Cat Dad
Brian Wordenn sits with his cat Loki.
Losing a loved one can be one of the most difficult parts of life, specially when it’s the loss of a pet. When I spoke to Brian Worden, he explained how difficult it was for him to lose a part of his family.
“We don’t have kids, we have animals. We had two cats, Arthur and Sophia. We got them when my wife and I first started dating. 15 years later, you know, losing them – that was tough. It really screwed with my head. I was driving Arthur to the vet every morning before work. We made them as comfortable as possible. They were the most spoiled animals There is probably no other way they could have gotten better care.”
“They passed away within six months of each other. The feeling of not being able to save them, how they look to you with so much unconditional love, it was tough for us. What we needed to keep hearing was that we did all that we could.”
Since the loss of Sophia and Arthur, Worden has gotten two more cats, Loki and Pickle.
