We don't pay them like heroes.

To put this all in perspective: My 20-year-old daughter is a college student. She works in the Stockyards area of Fort Worth operating a mechanical bull for tourists who fancy themselves bull riders. Her job is fairly simple: Take their money, tell them how to get on the bull and then operate the single switch and two levers that control it. For this, she is paid $11 an hour. Contrast this to the paramedic in the MedStar ambulance who provides emergency care for the tourists in the Stockyards. The paramedic staffing that ambulance is earning approximately $13 per hour and receives no benefits whatsoever. Am I the only one who sees the irony here? Consider this: My $3.45 an hour salary as a paramedic in Fort Worth in 1977 is equivalent to $11.48 in 2003 dollars. Sadly, EMS pay in my hometown is not much better nearly 30 years later. And that, my friends, is an embarrassment and a shame.