St John legend Ian hangs up his uniform

Turangi man Ian Read credits his St John ambulance training with saving the life of his youngest daughter Nikki.
Although Nikki was the most personal of his patients, it's almost certain that after four decades of turning out to illnesses and accidents of all descriptions, she's not the only person Ian has helped save.
But the pre-emergency care officer and Officer of the Order of St John put all that behind him when he hung up his St John uniform for the last time after 40 years of voluntary service to the organisation.
Ian, 66, says although he's loved his role as a volunteer with Tuwharetoa St John Ambulance in Turangi, it was time to go.
"It was sad to leave what I've loved doing for 40 years ... I did it for the community, not for glory or anything."
Ian, who works as a Conservation Department ranger, originally came to Turangi in 1969 as a tunneller for the Tongariro Power Development. When he had to get a first aid certificate for his job, he decided to become a St John volunteer, partly inspired by his grandfather, a permanent ambulance officer for Cook Hospital in Gisborne.
When Ian started, there were no cellphones or pagers and volunteers on call had to stay close to their home phones at all times. His wife Val, who does not drive, recalls that with four children, the hot summer days spent tied to the house when the children would have rather been at the lake, could become trying.
Today's volunteers have cellphones and pagers, but there have been other changes too. When Ian started, CPR was given at a rate of five chest compressions to one breath. Now the rate is 30 chest compressions to two breaths. Medical technology has also improved. And he's seen volunteers and paid staff come and go (there were 30-plus volunteers when he first started, now there are only seven). He's transported patients in Dodge, Valiant, International and Bedford ambulances.
In recent years Ian has juggled his full-time DOC work with his St John duties by electing to do mostly night shifts, where volunteers sleep at the St John station. Even though there were some nights he hardly got any sleep, he usually didn't feel any worse for it the next day and would still go off to work.
"Sometimes it was a case of coming home, out of one uniform, into the next, gobble down some Weetbix and then off again," says Val.
He's seen just about everything too, from stabbings to drunks, asthma attacks to cardiac arrests, traumatic accidents to people who've simply fallen out of bed.
Ian says although volunteers now have the option to work towards NZQA qualifications in their training, experience also counts for a lot, particularly at stressful jobs such as road crashes.
"I won't miss going to crashes," he says, adding that it's seeing children involved that affects him the most.
"Adults you can walk away from it, but kids, it hurts you."
There's been so many callouts over the years that it's hard to single any out, but Ian remembers one callout to a car crash on the Desert Road where it was snowing so heavily that he couldn't see the road in front of him.
"There was probably eight inches of snow from Puketarata to Waihohonu and all I could see was a truck mark that had actually come through and I followed that. I parked up the top of the hill and we brought the patients up [to the ambulance] in a four-wheel drive. We just loaded and got out of there and treated the patients in the back as we went."
Ian says despite the abysmal weather conditions, leaving injured people alone on a freezing snowbound road simply wasn't an option.
"We could have said no [to the callout] but there were patients out there."
Although Val has had to put up with Ian often being absent on St John duties over the years, she was grateful for his skills when their daughter Nikki was 5 and had bad asthma, which progressed to a series of seizures.
One Monday night, as Ian was walking in the door from St John training, Nikki was struck by a serious seizure. She stopped breathing. Ian performed CPR and was able to resuscitate her. She was in Waikato Hospital on life support for 12 days.
Although he's stepped aside from the ambulance duties, and is looking forward to spending more time with his family and in his garden, Ian's still retaining an involvement as a member of the local St John committee, but he says he'll miss the camaraderie of working hands-on with the other volunteers.
He recommends volunteering with St John to other people, saying it helps the community. Those who are keen can take their training further to become paid ambulance officers.
St John held a farewell function for Ian on July 31 and presented him with a beautiful Val Raymond watercolour painting of Lake Taupo. Ian says he was disappointed that nobody from St John senior management attended and that Taupo operations team manager Graeme Harvey did not make a speech.
However, Graeme says although the St John Hamilton-based general manger Eddie Jackson couldn't attend, he put in his apologies. Graeme added that while he did not personally make a speech at Ian's farewell, which was run by the local St John Tuwharetoa branch, he spoke to Ian afterwards and thanked him for his contribution.
"Doing 40 years of service is something that St John is proud of and as far as St John ops goes, we're grateful to Ian for what he's given to St John and what he's been able to give to the Turangi community," he says.