"After a year of intense training, 21 students are now graduates from Kapi'olani Community College's paramedic program. It's a milestone that comes as Hawaii continues to battle a shortage of first responders. My dad started getting sick. He's older now, and I never thought about working on an ambulance being an EMT, being a paramedic. We called, they came, and I credit the EMS for my dad still being around today, but I was like, you know, I should go do this for somebody else. Other graduates have similar stories, some gaining inspiration from their time as EMTs. Just doing the job, I see what paramedics do on the daily. It's awesome being able to do more and help people, and it just sent me to, I was like, I've got to go to class, I'm just going to do it. It's awesome to be done with class and have the patch. It's awesome. It's good news for Honolulu EMS, which just welcomed 28 new EMTs to their staff on Wednesday. The 28 that started yesterday, the 15 that graduated today, we may be down to no vacancies by the end of this year. So having zero vacancies in EMS or near zero vacancies has really historically been unheard of in the last 30 years in our department. KCC's paramedic program is open to students from every county. The director says most graduates return to the communities they call home. 16 of these will come back to Oahu. There's, like I said, one in Kauai and four on the Big Island. There's usually one paramedic per truck, sometimes two. So that's going to really advance the advanced life support that the agencies can provide to the communities. Just go for it. It's a great job. If you want to help people, just do it. It's awesome. You get to be out in the world. You're not sitting behind a desk. You're out doing new things every day. Just so proud of them, the role they're going to fill and the vacancies they're going to fill in saving lives and taking care of people on our island. The next round of students will begin their paramedic training through KCC in August. We'll have more information on KH12.com. Bryce Moore, KH12 News, Working for Hawaii."