Jackson County EMS celebrates 25 years

Twenty-five years ago this month, MedCare Services, which provided ambulance services to Holton and Jackson County, changed hands after a pair of Holton High School graduates with a passion for emergency medical care decided to purchase the ser­vice.

MedCare was then rebranded Jackson County EMS, with the corporate name of Techs Inc., and under the ownership of Jay Watkins and Brent Teter, it’s been growing ever since, branching out into four northeastern Kansas counties and providing services to the eastern half of the state.

“We attribute a lot of the growth to our staff. They’re kind of the glue for everything,” said Teter, a 1992 HHS alumnus.

Much has changed in the 25 years since Watkins and Teter took things over, whether it’s upgrades in the equipment used to provide emergency medical care or better transportation with improved vehi­cles. But one thing remains con­stant within the company — the character and the dedication of the people who work for them.

“The people we have working for us are the face, the picture, the billboard for us,” said Watkins, who graduated from HHS in 1987. “We’ve been so successful with the people who work for us that they can go to hospitals and care for patients, and then the hospitals call us and say, ‘We just love you guys.’ But it’s our crew that they love, because they’re out there just killing it. It’s music to our ears to hear things like that.”

Neither Teter nor Watkins imag­ined they’d be pursuing a career in emergency medical care after high school — it just came to them. In Teter’s case, he had “no clue” about what would become his ca­reer until a friend told him about a training class for emergency medi­cal technicians, or EMTs, that was starting shortly after his gradua­tion.

“I went to Manhattan and took the class, and I just fell in love with it during the class,” Teter said.

Watkins, who helped his father out on the family farm and worked in retail after high school, had an indirect route to an EMT’s career. He joined Holton’s volunteer fire department and planned to make it his profession, but one of the fire department’s requirements changed things for him.

“I had to take an EMT class,” Watkins said. “I learned that just like Brent, I preferred the medical side versus the fire side. It was re­ally a passion we both had.”

In the late 1990s, the two of them went to work for MedCare Services, which at the time was owned by Dale Jones. Watkins said that Jones had made overtures to him and Teter about taking over the ambulance service.

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