When they arrived on the scene, the woman was already dead. It was 3 a.m. in North Pole, Alaska, at an old woman’s house. Paramedics were already there and performing CPR when McCallum alumnus Hayden Price and the other firefighters with him pulled up to assist them.
“Another firefighter was finishing his CPR and looked up at me and asked me if I knew CPR, and when I said yes he said, ‘Get ready, you’re up next,’ so I got down on my knees next to him and got ready to take over compressions,” Price said. “When it was my turn, I began compressions and looked over at her face, no doubt she was dead.”
The doctor called off attempts to revive the woman after two rounds of CPR and Price took his hands off of her.
“I was the last person who tried to revive her,” Price said. “It was a stressed feeling.”
This memorable day was just one of many that the class of 2016 graduate has experienced during his two months this summer working as a volunteer firefighter in North Pole, Alaska. Firefighting has always been an ambition for Price, but it wasn’t until he actually became a volunteer firefighter that he found his love for it.
“I loved the bond between all the firefighters,” Price said. “It was like a big family. It was not how I expected it to be, but not in a negative way, I just don’t think that you’ll ever know what anything will be like until you experience it firsthand.”
From what Price had heard and seen in movies, he had a different image in his

head of what firefighting would be like before he started actually doing it.
“I gathered that there was a lot of down time to spend with your fellow firefighters as family when you weren’t going out on calls, but it’s not quite that simple,” Price said. “There is free time at the end of the day and during lunch, but other than that, you’re busy all the time. Things need to be done around the firehouse in

preparation for fires so that when we need tools they’ll be in service and ready to use, which is important since our lives are on the line; we can’t have a tool fail while trying to open a door to get to a trapped person.”

Price learned this truth through experience on fire service calls, where he learned to love firefighting.
“My favorite part is going into people’s houses to help them and seeing how different people live, their sort of culture, how they decorate their houses, and I just love helping others,” Price said.
Before he can get a full-time job as a firefighter, he must complete a series of classes to become certified.
“There is a fire department [in Alaska] that has a scholarship program which I might apply to if I still have the desire to become a firefighter at the end of my travels,” Price said.
“If I get in they will give me a full ride to University of Alaska Fairbanks for four years, a bed to sleep in for no cost at the fire station, and a stipend to pay for food so I don’t need a part-time job, all in exchange for my volunteering at the station for those four years.”
In the meantime, Price has big plans for upcoming travel to places all over the world, including stops in Costa Rica, New Zealand, Brazil and the east coast before he travels to Europe in the spring. He has already had some memorable experiences traveling this summer, from hitchhiking from Vancouver to Fairbanks and camping above the Arctic Circle, to seeing the Northern Lights and visiting Crater Lake, Redwoods and Denali National Park.
“I’ve learned a lot about people and their interactions with strangers, how important it is to travel and immerse yourself in different cultures in order to learn about where other people come from so that you have a better understanding of the world and how you can bring people together by understanding why they think how they do,” Price said.

Although Price enjoys Alaska, he said that he doesn’t think that he can live there permanently.

“In all honesty, the thing I have struggled with most, and maybe the No. 1 reason I can’t live up here, is the abuse of the environment and neglect of recycling,” Price said. “While most people who live here love Alaska for the wilderness, they refuse to put tax dollars into a fund for creating a recycling plant that will reduce the amount of trash in the landfills and the negative effects on the environment, and they love the oil companies who destroy the Arctic.”
He knows Alaska won’t be his final landing spot, but he’s not really looking to settle down anywhere any time soon. Price plans on travelling for a while and exploring different parts of the world.
“Every place I’ve been I’ve learned about the local culture and that opens my eyes to new ways of getting along with others that I might not have otherwise been able to understand and fully appreciate.”