01-08-2025
He thought he was too old to be an EMT. At 76, he's saved countless lives.
The day a man collapsed in a parking lot in Bethesda, Maryland, EMT Ed Levien rushed in an ambulance to the scene, where the injured man repeatedly called for Jesus.
'Jesus isn't here,' Levien recalled telling him. 'You've got to put up with me.'
The man looked at Levien's mustached face, his thinning gray hair and his round glasses and replied, 'Okay, Pops.'
That's how Levien, one of the oldest EMTs in Maryland, got his nickname a few years ago in the volunteer job that — to his surprise — has become an unintended second career and reshaped his identity.
'I never had an impact on anyone until I started doing this,' Levien, who previously worked in advertising, told The Washington Post.
Levien began working as a volunteer EMT when he was 65 years old, far surpassing the age of his colleagues at the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Rescue Squad. After recovering from an unexpected injury — with the help of strangers — he decided to help others for as long as his body would allow.
In the past 12 years, Levien, 76, has responded to more than 3,300 emergency calls and worked more than 13,000 unpaid hours. He has helped deliver a baby, treated potentially fatal wounds and been a calming voice for panicked families.
All the while he was wearing hearing aids and managing his chronic lung condition, emphysema.
Levien stopped working as an EMT in April, struggling with the physical aspects of the job, but he said he still wanted to be useful at the rescue squad — so he now trains new members, fills ambulances with medical supplies and schedules shifts.
Levien's journey to becoming an EMT began with a moped crash on his honeymoon in Bermuda in August 2000, which broke his left arm and severed a nerve. He couldn't move his dominant arm for about two years, Levien said, and endured crippling pain for more than a decade.
Levien struggled to cut chicken and steak at restaurants, tie his shoes and get dressed. He was surprised but grateful when strangers approached his restaurant tables to cut his meat and family members and friends bent down to tie his shoes.
Feeling vulnerable shifted his perspective, and Levien started becoming more charitable himself. If he saw someone struggling to cross a street or enter a door, he said, he would help. In 2011, Levien had a neurostimulator inserted into his chest to alleviate the chronic pain in his left arm, broadening his opportunities to help others.
In 2013, Levien drove by a digital billboard in front of the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Rescue Squad's headquarters that said the group was looking for volunteers. When Levien called, he suggested he could be a dispatcher because he thought, at 64, he was too old to be an EMT. But employees said there wasn't an age limit.
He did six months of medical training among a handful of 20- and 30-year-olds. Levien demonstrated his physical fitness by working with a partner to carry a roughly 100-pound mannequin up the rescue's stairs, across a hallway and back down the stairs in less than 10 minutes.
Soon, Levien was taking on two 12-hour shifts a week and responding to emergency calls.
'He was given another lease on life,' said Levien's wife, Robin. 'And it didn't go to waste.'
During one of his first calls, Levien helped a woman deliver a baby, whom the mother gave the same first initial as Levien.
Another time, when a man ruptured an artery in his groin, Levien lay on top of him to apply pressure and slow the bleeding, and his colleagues lifted them together on a stretcher into an ambulance. The man survived, Levien said.
While many first responders exchange basic greetings with patients, Levien was quick to add levity when appropriate by cracking jokes. Levien's age and life experience helped him build rapport with patients, especially the elderly and children, his colleagues said.
When Kevin Wallace, 27, began working with Levien near the end of 2022, he said he thought he would 'babysit the old guy.' But a few months in, they received a call from a panicked mother who said her child was suffering a seizure. Wallace rushed to grab medical supplies as the men responded to the call. Levien calmly and correctly predicted from the symptoms that the child's seizure wasn't deadly, Wallace said.
Wallace realized then that Levien knew what he was doing.
Sometimes when Levien is out at dinner, he said, strangers approach and thank him for saving their family members' lives.
'You sleep well at night,' Levien said, 'because what you're doing truly makes a difference.'
Levien and his colleagues still joked about his age and fashion choices. They would point out that he was the only one wearing suspenders with his uniform each shift.
Before responding to calls at senior facilities, Levien told his colleagues that their primary job was to ensure employees there didn't think he was a patient and give him his own bedroom.
While responding to a call at a townhouse during the coronavirus pandemic, Levien's colleague, Aaron Abramson, 27, said he would check on the patient himself. Levien asked why. Abramson, being protective of Levien, said he feared Levien would die if he got covid.
In addition to his 'Pops' nickname, Levien's colleagues call him 'Mr. Ed.'
'Some people thought he was a bit of a crazy old man,' said Abramson, who now works for the Baltimore City Fire Department. 'But I think for the most part, people really respected Ed.'
Levien helped save lives even when he wasn't on scene. He trained Daniel Edwards and his daughter, Ella, in emergency medicine at the firehouse. Years later, in December, the father and daughter saw someone in distress at a yoga studio, and gave them CPR.
'We were just doing exactly what we were trained to do in a pretty calm manner,' said Edwards, 51.
As Levien grew older, he struggled to pick up bodies and run up stairs with equipment to reach patients. Levien's final day as an EMT was April 30. The next day, Levien's colleagues wore suspenders for his retirement party.
Levien still trains new members, offers advice and restocks the rescue's six ambulances with equipment, including bandages, gloves, needles, suction tubes, toy ambulances for children and glucometers.
On a recent afternoon, a group of first responders was eating lunch when an alarm went off: Someone had fallen at an assisted-living facility. A few first responders jumped into an ambulance, and Levien watched as they left within a minute.
Levien misses going out on calls, he said, but he's still finding ways to help others. He routinely visits or calls his neighbors to check on their health.
Plus, every morning, Levien is reminded of his life's second passion when he drinks coffee from a gray and white mug his colleagues made that says 'POPS.'
