Lifelong Career Preps Paramedic Coleen Robertson For Her Dream Job

Story by Gail Parsons

Whether she knew it or not, Coleen Robertson was preparing her entire life for the role she now has as a community paramedic with Chatham Emergency Services.

Community paramedicine is a growing form of healthcare, which concentrates on intervention and prevention.

“Savannah and Chatham County has taken that idea and put a little twist on it,” Robertson said. “We're focusing on behavioral health and getting people into services for behavioral health.”

The goal is to help people get hooked up with the resources they need. Sometimes it’s a matter of getting them to doctor appointments or responding when someone is having a mental health crisis.

“We get them to the crisis center instead of going to the hospital because the crisis center is the more appropriate place where they’re actually going to get help,” she said. “The hospitals are already overwhelmed as it is with sick people, when you add mental health crisis on top of that they don’t get the services they need.”

Chatham Emergency Services started the program in October 2023 and Robertson is its only full-time community paramedic. However, the steps to get to that position started many years ago.

Her early education was in Catholic schools and she graduated from St. Vincent's Academy.

“The Sisters of Mercy were a tremendous influence on my life and the teachings and works of Catherine McAuley that were taught at St Vincent really stuck with me,” she said. “Service was drilled into me from day one, and I had amazing women to look up to in the Sisters of Mercy who really walked the walk and talked the talk when it came to service.”

Can’t Fight Fate

Robertson hadn’t been out of high school long when terrorists attacked America on 9/11. It was at a time when she was contemplating what direction she wanted to go in her career.

“I had already been dabbling with the idea of being some sort of healthcare worker but I had kids early, so that kind of derailed college for me for a little bit,” she said. “When 9/11 happened, I definitely knew that I wanted to do something first-responder-wise.”

A friend suggested she explore the Emergency Medical Technician route. She learned it wouldn’t take long to get her EMT certification, which would allow her to start her career and build a bridge into nursing if she chose that later. Although she loved being an EMT and went on to become a paramedic, she always dreamed of going to nursing school but fate wasn’t having any part of it.

“Every time I would attempt to do something with nursing, something would happen,” she said. “Every time some weird thing happened like, my FAFSA for college wouldn't work out for some strange reason, or some document would be missing. It was always just some weird, random thing that would happen so I couldn't start that semester at school. There was always some roadblock that would go up.”

The cards were dealt but she still held onto the idea that someday she would go into nursing. She went to paramedic school in 2012 with the knowledge that after earning that certification, it would only require about 18 more months of schooling before she was a nurse.

Eventually, she accepted that she was exactly where she was meant to be and the idea of being a nurse faded.

Change on the Horizon

When Robertson became an EMT, the adrenaline and the fast pace were what she expected. However, the pleasant surprise was the teamwork and attitude of the members of Southside Fire Department, where she started.

“I wasn’t expecting everybody to be such a family,” she said. “That was a first. I’d been in different employment situations and we weren’t family.”

She recalled when she went through paramedic school there was a class that talked about the different directions that certification could take someone, including paramedicine.

“I watched this whole video and was like, ‘That’s what I’d really like to do,’” she said.

As it turned out Deputy Chief Lydia McRary had been working on getting a similar program off the ground.

“She knew I was very interested in it,” Robertson said. “She had already learned the ins and outs of how to be a community paramedic and she was teaching me the ropes. When she approached me and told me that she was going to be opening this position, and would love for me to apply, I did, and I was offered the position. This was a dream come true for me. From that day in class, this is where I wanted to be as a paramedic”

Faith and Family

Robertson’s road hasn’t always been easy, there were many times she questioned if she had made the right choice.

“You're always going to get that bad call,” she said. “Something happens on that call where you're going to be like, ‘I don't know if I can do this anymore.’ I have had many times where I've reached a burnout point because of the drastic increase of call volume since I started.”

Having five children of her own, calls involving youth are often the most difficult.

“I don't think there's ever a pediatric call that's easy but I've had some really traumatic ones and those are the ones that stick with me,” she said. “Those are the ones that almost every day, at least once or twice a day, I think about, and they're just never going to leave my mind. Those are always the worst.”

Not all contacts are engrained in her memory in a bad way though. Some of the most positive interactions have happened since taking her new position. Among them was the individual who told her she had given them the will to live again.

“I don't think anything I could do, or any kind of outcome could beat hearing that come out of somebody's mouth,” she said.

Over the years, flipping the switch from passenger transport to a life-on-the-line call, or the days when EMS is running non-stop from call to call, can take a toll on a person. But her faith and family have seen her through the worst times.

“If it wasn't for my faith and my family, I really don't feel like I could have gotten through any of this,” she said. “Always knowing that I have my faith with me, 24/7, and I'm coming back to my family has really made me be able to get through some really hard times.”

Her husband Joey is a corporal with Chatham County Police Department. Her oldest daughter Madison Harwood just graduated from Georgia Southern University while her second child, Eva Harwood, graduated St. Vincent Academy this year. Daughter Lillian Harwood goes to Memorial Day School and her two youngest, Joseph and Annie, attend St. James Catholic School.

Add in her extended family, her husband’s family, and her faith in God and Robertson finds herself with, “A very good support system.”

She has leaned on that support when the job gets tough and to help her keep walking in her faith.

“I wouldn't say it ever got to a point where I didn't believe in God, but I would say I have been angry,” she said. “I didn't understand sometimes and I found a point in my life where I was extremely angry with God.”

She credits her husband for helping turn her around. When she got to what she said was the lowest point in her career as far as her mental health was concerned, it was Joey who helped bring her back. To this day, she’s not sure that she would have continued in the job had it not been for him.

“Personally, and professionally, he was a big, big factor in my healing my relationship with God,” she said.

This was despite his own experiences in law enforcement.

“I admire him because he has been through some stuff, some really bad calls,” she said. “I have watched that man's faith, and it's never wavered. I've always loved and admired him and his faith and how steadfast he is in his belief.”

When she looks at where she is today and the steps it took to get there, she said God knew exactly where he needed her. He made sure roadblocks were up when they needed to be, and down when she had to move forward.    ■