The oldest resident EMT with East Jefferson Fire Rescue has been a librarian, a music and theatre teacher, a doula assisting in births, and an employee of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Dahti Blanchard, at age 64, retired from her teaching position at Swan School in Port Townsend, but that only lasted a year.

Soon after retiring, she saw a sign calling for volunteer EMTs with EJFR and finally acted on a dream of 30 years.

“I was curious as to whether I’d be able to physically do the test, and went for it,” she said. Now, around a year and a half later, at the age of 67, Blanchard is a full time resident EMT, the oldest on staff.

The training for volunteers included a physical test, which involved carrying heavy objects like a 150-pound dummy out of a fire and two 40-pound buckets into a firetruck, and completing small tasks, such as threading tiny threads through needles in under eight minutes.

“I did it in something just a little over five minutes,” she said. “Everybody did it in three to five minutes. And at first I was feeling bad about that, and then I looked around and realized that the next oldest person to me was more than 30 years younger than me.” Overall, she found the test “not too difficult.”

Blanchard enjoyed being a volunteer even more than she thought she would. Not only were the calls exciting, but so was the time spent at the station learning new things, exploring the equipment, and doing drill training.

She had one 12-hour shift a week. This left her plenty of time to spend with her husband and two grandchildren, write her novels, train for triathlons and marathons and the Rhody Run, and play with the “Ladies’ Chamber Orchestra and Benevolence Society,” for which she plays five instruments and serves as artistic director. However, the one shift wasn’t enough for her. She was hooked.

“I wasn’t planning on becoming a resident (full-time and paid a stipend, but not an employee with full pay), but the more I do the more I want to do,” she said. “It’s just gone on from there.”

She enrolled in EMT training, and completed the three-month course, which involved more physical testing and interviews on top of the classroom curriculum. A classroom setting is where Blanchard thrives, as she considers herself a lifelong student.

“I used to love being almost a professional student,” she said. “It took me almost 20 years to accidentally get my degree.” That degree was a B.A. in Early Music from The College of St. Scholastica in Minnesota. Later on in life, she had to take training courses, including medical classes, to be a doula, and a year-long course to be able to teach music to the 6-8 graders at Blue Heron Middle School. But these courses were different, she said. Unlike any topic she’s learned before, she was completely new to the subject matter in the EMT course. Nevertheless, she passed, and soon began her 24-hour shifts with the EJFR, most often at the station off of Jacob Miller Road.

Her schedule is usually 24 hours on, then off, then on again, followed by a four-day break. A common shift is 8 a.m. to 8 a.m. Like her fellow EMTs and firefighters, she has her own room, and takes turns cooking dinner for her colleagues, an experience she enjoys.

Lt. Jason MacDonald said he has seen Blanchard growing more confident by the day, but adds that she arrived on the job with advantages over most of her peers.

“She came well-equipped with some life experience that has already served her very well,” he said, noting her doula experience in particular. “She brings kind of a different take on life than traditionally what we get. We get a lot of 18- to 20-year-old people who haven’t had a lot of life experience, and so they at times have difficulty relating to a lot of our patients, where Dahti seems to relate very quickly and easily with patients, and so that can offer them a reassuring feeling.” He adds that her “kind, gentle” demeanor has made her quick friends within the department, and that his relationship with her deepened upon finding out that he had grown up with her son.

Blanchard’s husband doesn’t mind her being away so much. “He thinks it’s great,” she said, adding that his positive attitude comes from the way their family has run since they homeschooled their two children. “Our way of homeschooling was whatever we got interested in, we all got interested in it and learned it. He likes to make jokes about how much he’s learned from this, too.”

She knew she wanted to find a way to continue to help people and make a difference in her retirement, but said that it wouldn’t have occurred to her even three years ago that she’d be doing it in this exact, hands-on way.

“It’s been a surprise to me that this is where life turned, and that this is probably one of my favorite things ever to do,” she said.

However, she finds many parallels between this profession and the ones she’s held, finding an especially strong connection to how she helped countless children through teaching them music.

“To me, looking back on it this is now the obvious progression for me,” she said.

Blanchard came in with some pretty clear ideas on what she wanted from the job and what her limits were. She signed on to just be an EMT, not an EMT/firefighter like the other residents and career workers. However, she does help the firefighters with their equipment and keeping track of their vital signs, among other things, and has taken on more of these duties over time. She initially didn’t want to drive the ambulance, but she has found herself behind the wheel a few times since then, and hasn’t minded it.

“The more I do it, the more passionate I am about it, and the more I love it,” she said of her job.

Despite her initial worries, she believes she has adjusted “amazingly well.” She was afraid, like all EMTs she said, of not waking up for her first night call, but that has not been a problem. When a call comes in, a tone sounds and all the lights in her room come on, and she’s out the door in two minutes or less.

In fact, she’s added duties to her list, becoming a car seat technician for families, teaching fire extinguisher skills classes, and visiting schools. She performs these duties even on her days off.

Aside from gaining so much new knowledge and rushing off to calls, Blanchard said she has greatly enjoyed learning new things about herself as well.

“I didn’t know how I would be able to handle obvious difficult things, and I’ve been happy and excited to find that I can really focus in the moment, handle those things, and be able to be present for what we’re doing,” she said.

In the meantime, Blanchard continues to eagerly learn new things while working on her hand skills for the many small tasks she realizes are among the more challenging in the job. But she doesn’t plan on slowing down anytime soon.

“I see myself doing this just as long as I’m physically able to do it, and I expect to be that for quite a long time,” she said.