‘Wise’ beyond his years: Teen EMT from Woodbridge is on a quest to serve
Two months into his training with the Occoquan-Woodbridge-Lorton Volunteer Fire Department, 17-year-old Avery Wise was ready for prime time.
It was January 2025, and a 73-year-old woman in Prince William had stopped breathing. Wise was at Station No. 2 in Woodbridge – in a classroom completing timely EMT training on intubation skills – when the call came in. His unit responded to the woman at a loss for breath.
When Wise arrived, another unit on the scene had already started chest compressions. A fellow medic asked Wise whether he had put in an airway before. Wise replied he had, in fact, just learned how to do that.
Wise told InsideNoVa putting in an assisted airway consists of placing a tube down the patient’s throat and then attaching a breathing device to it.
“So I go ahead and I place it in, and it works well, I get a good response on the ventilations,” he said in an interview. Eventually, they loaded the patient into the ambulance and drove her to the hospital. During the drive, Wise said, he sat by the patient’s head, “breathing for her, making sure that her chest is rising adequately.”
The patient was later discharged from the hospital, healthy.
Although Wise said that when he first walked onto the scene he was overwhelmed – this was something he’d never seen before – he decided to take action despite the fear in the back of his mind.
“In that moment, I had to make a decision on whether or not I was going to allow that fear of what was going on cloud me from being able to help her, or if I was going to suppress it for the moment in order to provide the best care that I could,” he said.
Wise made the right decision in suppressing that fear and taking action. A moment of reflection came afterward, when his unit returned to the station and the crew sat down to discuss the call – a department policy after every “big call” a unit makes to help team members process and talk through what just transpired.
The response earned Wise national recognition and the Passion for Public Service Scholarship from the National Society of High School Scholars.
What it means to serve
The January 2025 call and the many others he’s been a part of since then taught Wise what it means to work in a “service position,” he said.
“No matter how big or small the call is, everyone requires the same amount of passion for care that you have,” Wise said. “So you should treat everyone with the respect that they deserve.”
EMTs, medics and other first responders, are in a “servant” position, he said, and he’s learned how to demonstrate a “servant attitude,” even if the call doesn’t appear to be an emergency.
“The biggest thing that I’ve learned as a volunteer EMT … is to just treat everyone with respect and to be a servant to those who you are serving,” Wise said.
Wise, who lives in Woodbridge and attends Logos Classical Academy in Lorton, is working toward becoming a crew lead.
He was first introduced to first responder work while working as a lifeguard at a sporting facility, which had EMTs on staff. He said he began to think about how he could contribute more and felt the next step would be to become an EMT. Coincidentally, one of his friends was an EMT and recommended he join the fire department.
Most of his ideas of what EMT work looked like stemmed primarily from TV shows, which, he said, he now knows are largely inaccurate depictions of the work.
“Looking back on it, I can firmly say that television does not portray it adequately at all. It is a very different environment than what I would have anticipated, but I do very much enjoy it,” Wise said.
Wise said media depictions of EMT work are often over-dramatized, while in reality, “everything is a lot calmer.”
“I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up before I started volunteering at the fire department,” Wise said. “But after being involved with patient care, I can’t even imagine what else I would do.”
He told InsideNoVa he plans to pursue a medical degree, though at the time of the interview he was not yet sure where he would be attending college.
Will Lam, 19, met Wise while working at the OWL volunteer fire department. Wise was assigned to his crew, and Lam ultimately became one of Wise’s mentors.
Though they no longer work together – Lam now works as a firefighter in Fairfax County – Lam remains one of Wise’s mentors and wrote a recommendation letter for Wise’s scholarship application.
As Lam and Wise got to know each other, Lam said he learned about Wise’s desire to go into the medical field and his “enthusiasm and passion to help others.”
That desire and enthusiasm to help others, Lam said, is what makes Wise uniquely-suited for work as an EMT and beyond in the medical field.
“His ability to work with others, and truly care about them and their situation,” Lam said. “But also that curiosity … he is always asking questions, trying to learn more, better himself, fine tune his skills.”
Lam himself, despite being older and in a leadership position, said he learned from Wise what it means to be a “servant leader.”
“Just throughout all of his sacrifices that he makes for the department and for those around him, he just takes up his additional responsibilities without hesitation,” Lam said. “That really taught me a lot.”