"It means a lot to a patient when someone else can speak their language," says Cruz, one of the few, and possibly the first, Latino paramedics in the area.
Working in housekeeping and later as a young orderly at Cottage Hospital in Galesburg, Cruz would sometimes be called upon to translate when patients with limited English-language skills arrived at the hospital. After almost 30 years as a paramedic — the last 23 at Advanced Medical Transport — he's still called upon to translate.
Cruz has seen the need for his interpreting skills rise steadily over the years.
Peoria's Spanish-speaking population is growing, he says. "And we're not just seeing people from Mexico anymore, they're from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and from South American countries, Colombia and Argentina."
He has also noticed an uptick in new residents from Asian and Middle Eastern countries. "We're just seeing more people from different ethnic groups."
Communications during emergencies can be stressful even when all parties speak the same language. Communications breakdowns caused by language differences can turn an emergency into a disaster.
"It's one of those barriers we try to make sure we can bridge," says Peoria Fire Chief Chuck Lauss.
With a scarcity of bilingual police officers, firefighters and other first responders, Peoria's Emergency Communications Center has relied on a language translation service for more than 20 years. The center, which handles emergency calls for the city and county, currently uses the 24-hour language service, Voiance. The Arizona-based company is one of a growing number of customer service companies that specialize in language interpretation by phone, video or mobile app.
Like Cruz, David Tuttle, manager of the communications center, says he has seen calls from people with limited English increase "dramatically" in the past decade.
From June 2016 to June 2017, the center used Voiance translators for 145 calls. The majority, 87 percent, or 126 calls, were for Spanish translation. The second highest, French, was just 12 calls, followed by Arabic (four calls), Vietnamese (two calls) and Mandarin (one call).
Less than 150 calls in one year may not seem like much for a dispatch center that handles more than 9,000 calls a month. But, Tuttle says of the translation service, "We wouldn't be able to provide 911 services effectively without it."
Dispatchers simply push a button on the console to connect a translator to all parties in what amounts to a bilingual emergency conference call.
The city of Peoria uses a similar telephone translation service, but a different company, when police officers and firefighters need language interpreters. In some cases, use of the services overlap, according to Tuttle. For instance, first responders at the scene may use the communication center's translation service.
If a Spanish-speaking officer is on duty, that officer may assist another officer who needs an interpreter.
Tuttle and Cruz say they'd like to see more bilingual first responders.
Cruz is familiar with hospitals that use translation services.
"I'd like to observe, just to see what it's like," he says. "Sometimes it's not the same as translating person to person."
He has seen the issue from all sides, the anxious patients who can't make themselves understood, the paramedic who feels lost because he doesn't understand, and with him, either on the scene or getting patched in by phone.
The son of a migrant worker who traveled from Mexico to Princeville every season, the family moved to Galesburg in 1973 after Cruz's father was hired at a foundry. Cruz graduated from high school in 1977 and began working at the hospital. He had always wanted to be a police officer, but Galesburg paramedics he met at the hospital convinced him to become a paramedic.
He's intimate enough with the Spanish language and the Latino community to know Latinos call the universal emergency number 9-11 instead of 9-1-1. He also knows, in many instances, children are able to translate for their parents.
Cruz currently works as an assistant in AMT's communications center, where, if needed, he translates for everything from emergencies to the billing department and the 2-1-1 helpline, which is also housed at AMT. But his days as a paramedic in the field, a supervisor of field staff or director of operations are still fresh enough that he jumps when a phone rings. And he still knows what it's like to translate both at the scene or to be patched in from the office or another location.
"When did the chest pains start? Are you nauseated? Short of breath?" He reels off the questions he'd ask.
"All of that is critical," he says. "Those are valuable minutes you want to give to a patient right away."
Pam Adams can be reached at 686-3245 or padams@pjstar.com. Follow her on Twitter @padamspam.
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©2017 the Journal Star (Peoria, Ill.)
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