EMS college program wins service award

PALMER — A Mat-Su College class that saved a man’s life in May has been honored with a statewide award for service.

The Above and Beyond awards are distributed each year by the state’s Southern Region EMS Council, based out of Anchorage. Mat-Su College’s EMS program received its award June 27, according to a press release from the college.

“Their prompt and successful actions speak to the level of training in the paramedic program that has fostered such an attitude of readiness, and prepared students for life threatening situations,” the press release states.

Norman Knaak, the student whose life was saved, also was a nursing student, who told the Frontiersman in May that he thought at first he was just experiencing some nervous stress.

But then he passed out during his presentation. He didn’t have a pulse and was struggling to breathe and to stay alive.

His nursing colleagues assessed and the EMT students across the hall help him stay alive, using CPR and an oxygen bag.

“If he’d been anywhere else,” Mat-Su Regional Marketing Manager Nicole Caldarea said then. “It still gives me goose bumps.”

The Above and Beyond Awards were created “to provide recognition to those who have helped promote EMS at the local level within the Southern Region,” according to the EMS council’s website.

Past awards have gone to paramedics and firefighters in Anchorage and Ninilchik, the Village Public Safety officer in Old Harbor and one with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The award to the Mat-Su College Class was given “in recognition of the fast actions of the Paramedic Class in responding to a nursing student in cardiac arrest, performing a full cardiac code with a successful resuscitation and stabilizing the patient until the arrival of Mat-Su EMS,” according to the council’s website.

In his interview back in May, Knaaksaid he was very grateful to his colleagues, whose quick response he credits with saving his life.

“That’s how you save somebody — jump right in there and put some pressure on it,” he said. “I have nothing but very, very good words to say about those people.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or

andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.