Michaela is wearing a dark blue collared shirt that reads “Pecos Valley Public Services” and cargo pants. And that’s why I’ve come to find her today. She’s behind an all-volunteer, community-led EMS service– the first in New Mexico– that embeds itself in the community to provide free medical support to local residents.
When getting their provisional license to operate last fall, Michaela found that the service she wanted to build was foreign, alien even, to the established ways of providing medical care. It was so out-of-the-box that it was almost unclassifiable.
“When I went to register Pecos Valley as an EMS, they asked me, ‘Are you with the city or the state?’ And I said ‘Neither!’ ‘Ah,’ they said, ‘so you are for-profit?’ No– we aren’t making a profit.’ ‘Oh, so you will do Medicaid? And I said, no, just free.”
Her eyes scan the room, the way a lifeguard checks a pool. “What we want to do is simple: Be here in case someone needs us.”
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