Wilsonville Spokesman Online

Fire district chaplains answer some of life's most difficult calls

Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue's three chaplains must be firm, yet sensitive

• By: Michelle Te  
• Published: 1/18/2010 4:15:31 PM

Photo By: Michelle TeTough duty
Holly Migas and Mike Ruptak are two of three chaplains who assist on calls for Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue. They’ve got to be calm in the midst of chaos, and lend a listening ear in exactly the way that it’s needed.

Holly Migas and Mike Ruptak might appear, upon first glance, to be opposites.

She’s a young, petite mother busy with two grown boys. And she doesn’t like dead bodies or “yucky” things.

He’s got a grizzly voice and shock of white hair, a man who’s seen his share of death and destruction.

But when the pager on their belt goes “beep-beep,beep-beep,” these two opposites attract for a mission, purpose and calling. They must be equal parts tough and sensitive, caring yet decisive.

Migas and Ruptak, along with Greg Fair, operate the chaplaincy program for Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue. More than anything, these three provide a listening ear, a resource for people during their darkest hours and trials.

That resource may be to preach the word of God, or it may be to recognize that God is the last thing a person wants to hear. It may be sitting for five hours after a wife has lost her soulmate while waiting for another family member to arrive. Or, it may involve counseling with a firefighter struggling to maintain a marriage amidst grueling schedules.

Often, almost weekly, it’s delivering the most devastating news a person can hear — that a loved one has died.

“I can honestly say, there’s  been times I’ve had enough with the human race,” said Ruptak, who heads up the TVF&R program. “But what it’s done is add fuel to the fire. The more I see, the more I recognize the need. It took some time, but perhaps God has uniquely equipped me to handle things that other people might not be able to handle and to put it out at the time it needs to be put out.”

It’s been 30-plus years since he answered his first call, but he can recall it vividly. The look on the father’s face, the three teenage boys standing there, the way he had to tell them of a woman’s death. It has shaped the way he’s dealt with the thousands of calls he’s answered since then.

The call on Mount Hood
In the past 18 months, Migas has answered some tragic calls, including seven suicides on her first nine solo assignments. But the grueling search for two missing climbers on Mount Hood in December, and the discovery of one found dead in the snow, was among her toughest to date.

“We really just spent a lot of time with the family,” she said. “Because they are Christians, publicly that was a huge part of what we talked about — we prayed with them, we cried with them. I’ve never cried as much on the scene as I have with that one.”

Migas had come to Mount Hood at the request of her long-time friend Dennis Simons, the chaplain for the Sandy Fire Department. She assisted the family in making decisions about when to call off the search and helped communicate that message with the sheriff’s office.

“They didn’t want to give up hope, but there’s this point,” she said. “As the rescue team and the sheriff’s office, you want to search as long as it’s feasibly possible. It’s hard sitting up there, waiting for the weather to clear, knowing there was such a small chance of survival under the conditions.”

Even two days after Migas returned home, she found herself still easily brought to tears when recalling the mountain experience.

“Some weeks are hard,” she said. “Today has been a hard day for me. I feel so sad for them. If I didn’t have my friends that I could text, that I know are praying for me … they don’t ask questions, they aren’t trying to find out information, they just love me and want to support me. That’s vital.”

That support system is a necessary part of the job, said Ruptak, who requires a “letter of support and acknowledgement” even before considering hiring a new chaplain. It’s one of those things he’s learned in dealing with such difficult situations.

In fact, Ruptak has accumulated a mental list of philosophies that make the job both bearable and flourishing.

His chaplains need to be emotionally stable.

“You’re often sitting one-on-one, with someone whose loved one has just been murdered or killed in a car accident or they’ve lost a child,” said Ruptak. “There’s going to be those cathartic moments where you connect on that level. But if you lose that perspective, you won’t be any help to them. People in extreme crisis, they need somebody stable that they can lean on, and vent if they need to.”

They need someone to guide them through the process, something firefighting crews often are too busy to help with.

“They’re navigating through a process they’ve never been through before and probably never will be again,” he said. “If you can help them go one step at a time, they can begin thinking again and making decisions. But if they don’t know what’s happening, if they are totally in the dark or it doesn’t look like it does on TV, you are there to answer questions.”

People will often tell Migas, “I’m sorry, I just can’t think right now. I don’t know the answers to anything.”
“That’s why we’re there, to help ask the right questions,” she said. “Grief does that to you, the initial shock of ‘What do I do?’”

Ruptak firmly believes that people on the scene of a crisis never should be left alone. He also considers a follow-up phone call or visit as imperative.

“One thing we are really, really certain about is we don’t leave family members, a spouse, we don’t leave them by themselves,” Migas said. “We can do short-term care, a few hours, but we need to know they have someone for the long haul.”

“Greg sat for five hours with a woman, waiting for her son to get down here from Seattle,” said Ruptak. “He just sat there with her, wouldn’t leave her alone.”

In those times, he said, Tualatin Valley chaplains must be culturally sensitive, firm in their own religious beliefs, be willing to offer just what is needed and understand that it is a learning process.

“My first call on my own was a teen suicide,” said Migas. “I will say there were things that were a bit shocking, culturally. It was a cross-cultural incident. There were a few things … holy cow, it was chaotic.”
Ruptak, who assisted at the scene, said there were 18 to 20 teenage friends, and the mother and father of the victim, who belonged to a different culture than the teens.

“It took me a bit to restrain the dad from doing physical bodily harm to the teens,” he said. “That was an eye-opener for Holly. I encourage my chaplains to become as culturally aware as we can.”

Additionally, Migas understands the need to avoid “preaching” or imposing a certain set of religious beliefs. Both Migas and Ruptak are licensed ministers. Ruptak is a pastor for Hall Boulevard Baptist Church.

“I have my own world view, but on the scene I’m there to be a resource,” Ruptak said. “It’s not denying who you are. I can say, ‘This is what I am and I understand my belief system might be different than theirs.’ I’m there to get them through an aberrant period of time, however that resource can be.”
Migas said she considers it a privilege to be there in a person’s hour of need.

“I’ve been doing this for about a year and a half, and I haven’t ever really felt like I’m done with this,” she said. “Even on the yucky stuff, I think, ‘I love it.’ Just walking in there and loving on those guys that haven’t had anyone love on them. It’s such a huge honor, to be invited and accepted in the most intimate time. When other people want to give them room, they welcome you, they sit with you as they’re making decisions, crying, walking through those first few hours.”

On Mount Hood, Migas said the family members of the lost climbers were thanking her for her support.
“I looked at Dennis and told him, ‘I feel so honored to be here.’ It’s overwhelming to me, sometimes, that I’m welcomed to their home at those times in their lives.”

That philosophy carries over to the first responders as well.

“These people have hurts and needs much deeper than most,” said Ruptak. “Research shows that people who are drawn to police and fire work have a higher tolerance to stress, but it puts them in greater danger because they have an attitude of ‘I can handle this.’ There is an effect to cumulative stress.”

The Tualatin shooting
After the most recent shooting in Tualatin, where two people died and others were injured at a drug testing clinic, TVF&R chaplains assisted with fire and police personnel, witnesses and the family members of the victims.

“Initially, we worked with responders,” Ruptak said. “Then Greg went to police headquarters. I worked with civilians and witnesses. Then we worked with police until families started to arrive. Then we worked with police again.

“We’ve got men and women who deal, perhaps on a daily basis, with life and death issues,” he said. “Certainly not every call, but significant enough that they need to have a sounding board. They need to know there are people who understand and care and can watch them, to keep their gravity where it needs to be.”

It may be as a spiritual advisor, or just someone who needs to talk.

“We have a lot of different functions,” said Ruptak. “We can be called ‘chaplain,’ but it’s not the only thing we do. We’re here to help, to get you through just what’s going on right now.”

Most importantly, he wants his chaplains to be part of the program for all the right reasons.

“A lot of people think this is a really neat job,” he said. “They love to run out where the action is. But I don’t want someone who likes the adrenaline of just being out there. Or maybe others like a phase of the job, but not what it requires. I want people who sincerely care for the people they are serving, that will take it more than just a job. You’ve got to have a sense that you are called to it. To try and define it, that’s impossible. But I’m as sure that I was called to this as I am that I was called to preach.”

Migas said she tries to stay focused on the people she’s serving, rather than the job.

“It could easily become just another call, another death notification,” she said. “But remembering that this is the first one for them, and this will change their life forever. It won’t change my life. I’ll walk away, go to my kids, have dinner. But their life is forever changed. How would I want someone to come in, to talk with me, and deal with me? To us, it could become a job if we’re not careful. I refuse to let that happen. Being there, being present, it’s a ministry of presence.”

How the program started
Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue’s chaplaincy program started in the mid-1980s, after an operations chief noted that several firefighters were coming through his door, trying to deal with the cumulative stress attached to the job, said Karen Eubanks, public information officer.

Dwight Douglas was hired and he quickly made friends with local fire crews,.

“He was on the water rescue team, he played pick up basketball games with them, and they soon realized he could help them,” she said. “But he was also there for the community.”

By the early 1990s, TVF&R chaplains were answering about 80 calls a year. This year, the chaplains already have answered 200 9-1-1 calls, which doesn’t include calls from other agencies. They also provide official backup for the Tualatin Police Department.

Greg Fair, one of the three chaplains, is a retired firefighter who had been assigned to Station 34.

“He has a remarkable working relationship with the crews,” Eubanks said.

“He lends experience that is unsurpassable,” said Mike Ruptak, who heads up the chaplain program. “He knows the culture of the fire district. He’s just a neat Christian guy.”

Ruptak, in fact, had been approached by Fair before either of them worked for the chaplain program. He already had been working in the field, as well as his job as a licensed pastor, for two decades.

“I’ve been doing it since 1078, before there were many chaplain programs in the country,” said Ruptak. “I worked primarily with police for most of those years.”

It started out as a request from a police friend with colleagues dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder. They were Vietnam veterans displaying some problems on the job.

“I worked with these five guys for quite a while, four successfully, one not,” he said. “My friend then recognized the need, and talked to the chief about a job. I went out there, looking for anything out there, and through trial and error, that’s how I started it.

When he moved to Oregon, he found that none of the police agencies were interested in his services. Then he met Fair, and 12 years ago he started at TVF&R.
 

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