Kevin Allred and Dan DeVoogd are either lucky or cursed - depending on the perspective.
Luck or fate or a county fire department schedule put them together to care for two wounded police officers in two different gun-battles in the same neighborhood within about a month's time.Both officers survived, but that doesn't mean Allred and DeVoogd want a third call.
"That doesn't mean I want to be there next time," Allred said. "But if the call comes in . . . we'll do the best we can."
The partners work out of county fire station No. 2 in Magna and have been paired since June. Both have about seven years' experience as firefighters with Salt Lake County and two years as paramedics. They are part of a five-person crew that works 24-hour shifts.
Whether by coincidence or design, they were the ones who kept West Valley detective Bob Idle alive the night of Aug. 15 and the ones who treated Salt Lake County Sheriff's Lt. Steve Alexander on Monday night.
Both attacks in the area of 7200 W. 3500 South with Chinese-made SKS semi-automatic assault rifles. Idle was shot a half dozen times, while the top of Alexander's head was grazed by a single slug.
When the men arrived at the scene of Monday's shootout, they were told they were going to be treating an officer who'd been shot in the head. It was an unsettling case of deja vu, but neither had time to dwell on it because in the most recent case, bullets were still flying when the rescue workers arrived.
"One of the deputies told us (who the patient was) as we were ducking for cover," DeVoogd said. "It was kind of scary."
A little more than a month earlier in the same general area, the pair knelt beside Idle, who was, as DeVoogd described him, "in the worst condition I've ever seen a gunshot victim."
That night, Aug. 15, shortly after 11 p.m., they knew as soon as they got the call for help that it was a police officer they'd be trying to save. Monday, they didn't know until they got there.
Both said that information changed things.
"It's different because we work with these guys every day," Allred said. "We respond to a lot of the same scenes, traffic accidents, assaults with injuries. . . . They make sure the scene is secure for us. . . . We're kind of on the same team."
DeVoogd added, "There's just more pressure."
Allred was in charge of caring for the patient the night Idle was shot. Monday, DeVoogd was the "patient man."
They both said waiting nearly 15 minutes Monday night to treat Alexander, who laid near a patrol car trying to avoid being shot again, was nerve-racking. "Because you want to help, and you want to help now," Allred said. "It's tough to wait and not do anything to help."
DeVoogd said when he was told the wound was to the head and the length of time Alexander had been lying on the ground, he thought Alexander was dead. Fortunately, the bullet just grazed the watch commander's head, and after a night in the hospital, he was released.
Idle had a much more tentative recovery and spent three weeks in the hospital.
They said the incidents are something they think about but not obsessively, and both went back to work without taking any time off.
"You definitely think about it," Allred said. "You replay it in your mind; you kind of always wonder if you did the right thing."
For both paramedics, the incidents are the first shootings they've been involved with where law officers were the victims. They are surprised that there were two so close together in time and location.
"I think maybe people are becoming more brazen," Allred said. "They don't seem to respect authority as much as they used to. When I was growing up, you never talked back to a police officer. Now, it's almost the fad thing to do."