Meet the Texas paramedic of the year
Capt. Robert Missal has been a paramedic at the Jersey Village Fire Department since 1990, first as a volunteer for 10 years and then as the first emergency responder hired by the department in 2000.
Missal said he’s lived in Jersey Village since he was 3 years old. Other than several years of living in North Carolina and Alabama for the military, he said he is “pretty much a Jersey Village person.”
“Serving your community, it's always been a nice thing to be able to live and work in the same place,” Missal said. “There's so many times where we go to an incident and you have a connection with that person.”
After over 30 years of service, being named Texas Paramedic of the Year makes Missal feel “uncomfortable” because every person at the fire department does about the same thing that he does, Missal said.
“I don't do anything different than any other person does. I just happened to have been the person that happened to be in charge of something or I was the one that organized,” Missal said. “Maybe I looked [like] I was the front person of something and over 30 some odd years, it just happened enough times that I got recognized for it.”
Diving in deeper
Being a firefighter and paramedic was not the career Missal saw for himself when he was younger, he said.
“It happened to be the path that opened up in front of me. It's strange because I never pictured doing what I'm doing today,” Missal said. “When I was young, all I wanted to do was be in the military.”
Missal said he joined the Army straight out of high school; however, he did not get assigned to combat like he wanted. Instead, he spent his time in the military working at the hospital, assigned to work in an ambulance and the emergency room.
“Working in the emergency room turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. ... It set me up for coming out into the civilian world. And I started volunteering here at the fire department,” Missal said.
For 10 years, Missal was a volunteer at the Jersey Village Fire Department and worked at an oil exploration company. In 2000, Missal was hired as the first emergency responder in the department.
After more than 30 years at the fire department, Missal said he wears a lot of different hats. He is the captain of the “B shift,” a paramedic, a firefighter and a certified peace officer.
Also of note
In Texas, firefighters need to at least have emergency medical technician credentials to be certified, according to the Texas Commission on Fire Protection. A big part of the job as a firefighter is being able to handle medical emergencies, Missal said.
“We train and we have the capability to respond to fires. That's, of course, the name. But the reality is emergency medicine is more than 80% of what we respond to,” Missal said. “So, our days we prepare and do go to fire emergencies, but far more we go to medical emergencies.”
