Even after 14 years volunteering with St John Ambulance, James Xavier still gets a kick from treating trauma patients. 73462 Picture: Stewart Chambers
By Nicole Williams
IT IS a good thing James Xavier isn’t queasy at the sight of blood because the St John Ambulance volunteer said someone gets hurt everywhere he goes.
“I get a bit of a kick from trauma,” he said.
“And everywhere I go something seems to go bad.”
James, 25, was on hand when Dandenong principal Greg White nearly lost his life after the Melbourne Marathon last year. Also at the Anzac Day crash where a truck crashed into a group of veterans marching in the parade in Melbourne last year; as well as a stabbing at a Dandenong festival.
“The Anzac Day crash was pandemonium … I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said.
“I was trying to sort out seven people who’d been run over by a truck … usually I am pretty cool, calm and collected but not then.”
“I don’t really think about it at the time but then I go home and people tell me about it.”
The ‘born and bred’ Noble Park man has been a St John Ambulance volunteer since he was 11 and saw another young boy helping at a festival.
“I saw this kid at a festival and thought that was pretty cool,” he said.
“I got into it and have been there ever since.”
Volunteering has seen James behind the scenes at some amazing events and he’s even met an international superstar or two.
“It’s pretty cool to go to all the stuff, dance festivals and the Commonwealth Games,” he said.
“I have been to heaps of concerts and met famous people like 50 Cent and Eminem.”
With 14 years of volunteering under his belt, James is now involved in the training side of St John Ambulance as well as attending weekend events in the bicycle team.
His love and dedication to St Johns has pushed him into studying medicine and next year he will be working at Dandenong Hospital.
“I would say it’s probably the reason I decided to do medicine,” he said.
“It’s been a natural progression … the people who were studying to be doctors when I was a kid are now training me to be a doctor.”
It would be a safe bet to say James hasn’t seen his last trauma patient yet.
