EMS work that runs in family makes mom's day
Captivated by mother's experiences, two of her three sons followed her into the job
Angela Szeponski wanted her three young sons to have a strong role model.
So in the early 2000s she decided to enter the emergency medical services field.
“I looked around the community in real life, what types of role models there were. I looked at emergency services, and as a whole they encompassed everything that I thought was important — teamwork, brotherhood, sisterhood, education, (and) integrity,” she said.
She started out in Saskatchewan, and the family eventually moved to Alberta. After gaining more experience, she was hired by the Maskwacis ambulance service and the Alberta Health Services Edmonton Zone as a paramedic.
Now, Szeponski is acting supervisor for the Edmonton Zone and coming up on 17 years in the career.
But for the Szeponskis, the apple does not fall far from the tree. Dawson Szeponski was just five years old when his mom entered the field and said he and his brothers, Zane and Cale, learned about teamwork and its importance through her.
Both Dawson and Zane, following in their mother's footsteps, are paramedics for AHS. Cale, the eldest brother, has also done an EMT course and currently works as a heavy-duty mechanic.
Zane was the first to take the jump. He had some experience from working as a firefighter, but after speaking to his mom and learning more, he decided to give it a shot.
“I didn't really know where it was going to go, but it definitely opened a lot avenues,” he said. “(I) ended up actually completely falling in love with it.”
Dawson followed closely behind Zane, completing his emergency medical responder (EMR) course and working for an oil company. Eventually, he too found his way to AHS.
Zane said the positivity and camaraderie of working with EMS is what stood out to him when his mom came home with stories and made him want to pursue the career for himself. “She would talk about having amazing partners and playing pranks on each other in stations every now and then, little things like that,” he said.
For Dawson, the constant learning on the job has stuck out for him.
“Every day she would come home with these stories of all these cool things she learned about, the different cultures, different technologies, different anything,” he said.
“I mean, even since I've gotten into it, you pick anybody up from a homeless man to university professors, so you get such a wide range of knowledge from anywhere, all these different avenues of life and just being able to take a lot of that in and just have a more open view on everything.”
Both sons say they 've learned so much from their mother, not just at home but by getting to work with her on the job, which Dawson says is a privilege.
“She's been working on it for a lot longer than I have, obviously, and even a lot longer than some of the staff that we've had on the road. So she's got a wealth of knowledge,” he said. “Even to this day, I'm still learning from her.”
Angela said it's enjoyable for her to pop in on her sons' calls and see how they have progressed in their careers.
“That's what I like about doing calls with them, it's just like, wow, look at them, look at what I grew!” she said.
“They make me proud every day. It's wonderful.”