One cold, snowy night 10 years ago, Pete Brown's 14-year-old son Jeremiah was struck by a four-wheeler as he was walking home from the village gym. Brown found his son lying in the snow bleeding. Jeremiah had cuts on his head and a concussion and had fractured many of the bones in his hands. Brown said both of the boy's thighs were swelled up like footballs -- a good sign that his femurs might be broken. It was a chilling moment for Brown, a Vietnam vet and the village's volunteer fire chief. The nearest hospital was 150 miles away. Aniak didn't even have an ambulance. It took close to an hour to get Jeremiah moved into the bed of a pickup and transported to the local clinic, which at that time consisted of "a few examining rooms and a drug cabinet, " Brown said. It took another four hours for a plane to arrive to take Jeremiah to the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage. He recovered, but it was a close call.

Within days of the accident, Brown led an effort to bring ambulance service to Aniak. It was a decision that would have a profound effect on this Kuskokwim River community, especially for the kids, although no one knew that at the time.

The EMS system started modestly. Volunteer medics transported patients in the back of trucks or hauled them on sleds behind snowmachines.

The number of 911 calls that first year shot up from 25 to 250. Staffing quickly became a problem. A community meeting was held, and 17 high school kids showed up to help. Brown started a training program. Seven boys and one girl stuck with it. The teens called themselves the Dragon Slayers. "The boys picked the name, " Brown said.

In time, the boys either graduated or quit. And then, Brown said, something odd happened. "The girls took over."

One by one they joined: Michelle, Sophia, Roxanne, Lisa, Sonya, Shigone. All were between age 13 and 16. They studied and practiced together, memorizing such lifesaving measures as the ratio of breaths to compressions and how to insert oral airways.

After 200 hours of training, the new Dragon Slayers started going on calls with the town's medics. It was not a cadet program. The girls were certified in emergency trauma, basic life support and CPR and were expected to help. And they did.

Word spread fast about the all-girl team of teenagers who were fighting fires and helping save lives in a far-flung Alaska village, and a media frenzy began.

It was a hard story to resist: Where else in America were kids being called upon to do such a grown-up job -- and rising to the challenge?

A LITTLE GOES A LONG WAY

Aniak is a large village, with 572 people, according to the most recent census. It has a library, a troopers post and restaurants. There are lights on the airport runway and separate buildings for the elementary, middle and high schools. Not to say Aniak is rich. The fire department, for example, gets $18,000 a year from the village -- just enough to cover its electric and insurance bills and part of its heating costs, Brown said. The station relies heavily on federal grants. One need only look at its training dummies to see how far the money goes. Fred, the CPR mannequin, is missing its lungs. Level, the life-size skeleton, keeps losing its head.

The fire station is a big red building with three large white doors. Behind door No. 1 is the most used vehicle, an ambulance named 2 Awesome. Dragon Slayer Erinn Marteney, 15, recently gave a tour of the vehicle.

"These are our trauma dressings, " she said, pointing to a cabinet full of bandages. "Over here are our meds. ... The squad bench holds our Philly (neck) collars and our MAST pants (inflatable anti-shock trousers)."

Behind door No. 2 is Proud Mary, a flat-nose Ford pumper engine. Albert 7 is parked behind door No. 3. Albert was designed to do everything but in reality does nothing well, Brown said. The tanker's main job these days is to feed water to Proud Mary when there's a big fire, which is rare. There's another tanker named Splash and a Rescue Boggan that looks like an oversized baby carriage, designed to haul patients from places where 2 Awesome can't get.

It's not unusual that Aniak has a volunteer fire department, said Mark Barker at the state fire marshal's office. What's remarkable is the tremendous community involvement; it's usually a struggle to keep volunteer fire departments staffed in rural Alaska, he said. Many villages have equipment but don't know how to use it, he added.

Staffing used to be an issue in Aniak, but not anymore. Today, the department has so many volunteers it's hard to keep track of them, said Dave Lemaster, a volunteer firefighter and high school teacher .

"It's kind of like counting popcorn, " he said.

‘YOU DON'T CALL 911;

YOU ARE 911'

It's a Monday night, training time for the Dragon Slayers. They meet in the loft at the fire department, which has plywood floors and funny furniture -- wheelchairs and ambulance beds for seats and an old door for a table. You can tell teens run the place from the graffiti. "Home of the ash-kicking Dragon Slayers, " it says in flowery letters across a lectern.

Erinn Marteney and Caroline Kvamme, 16, both show up straight from basketball practice. Shauna Hamilton, 14, arrives a few minutes later. Tonight it's just the three of them.

The number of Dragon Slayers fluctuates. The teens get busy, into trouble or behind in their grades. Brown welcomes the kids back when they're ready, LeMaster said. "If you're willing to try, he's willing to work with you."

Brown has roan hair and is missing many of his front teeth. He shows up Monday in a pair of grubby jeans and a flannel shirt. He looks like a lumberjack.

The first thing he does is tell Erinn to shut off the rap music. Then he has the girls practice checking each other's blood sugar.

Erinn draws a dab of blood from Brown's finger and enters it into a hand-held machine. Erinn says the 127 reading is OK.

"What's a critical high?" Brown asks.

"Four hundred, " Erinn says.

A critical low?

"Fifty, " she says.

Erinn has been on more than 100 calls. She said the most difficult are suicide attempts by teens she knows. "You just don't see it coming, and then you're the first to see it, " she said.

"Everything's hard to deal with because you know everybody here, " Erinn added, but you learn to keep your emotions in check. After a difficult call, they all meet back at the station to talk about how they're feeling, she said. "We end with a group hug."

"The maturity level of some of these folks is just amazing, " said Michael Duxbury, an Aniak-based state trooper who has worked with the Dragon Slayers on snowmachine and four-wheeler wrecks.

The teens come into the program as passive, unsure kids who need to be reminded that "you don't call 911, you are 911, " LeMaster said, but they don't stay that way for long.

The girls throw their used needles in a hazardous waste canister, and Brown tells them to unpack a bag of equipment and explain how each item works. They act as if he's just asked them to pick up their room.

"They love every minute of it, but they complain constantly, " Brown says, rolling his eyes.

The Dragon Slayers practice intubating, inserting a tube into the airway of Fred, the mannequin. It's a difficult skill to learn -- a "confidence crasher, " Brown said. The girls aren't certified to perform the procedure in the field, but it's important for them to practice so they can better assist a medic who is, Brown said.

Erinn tries repeatedly to get the tube down Fred's windpipe, but it keeps going into his esophagus.

"They just won't quit, " Brown says, beaming.

After about 10 minutes, Erinn announces: "I've got it! I've got it!"

Shauna, an aspiring veterinarian, intubates Fred in about a minute. She is taller and quieter than Erinn and hasn't been on as many calls. She became a Dragon Slayer about six months ago after a friend and her mother asked her to. The most difficult calls for her are when elders get sick, she knows they're going to die "and there's nothing you can do, " she said.

Visiting with elders is one of the perks of the job though too, the teens said.

"I think it's the little calls that really mean the most, " Erinn said. There's a village woman in a wheelchair, she said. "We take her to bingo in the ambulance. ... She always has this big smile."

Caroline, on the team about five months, said it's also rewarding to run into kids after you've been to their house to help or they've heard about you around town. "They say: ‘I know you. You're the Dragon Slayers!' They just idolize you. It's cool."

Troopers want to capitalize on it. They've printed more than 700 posters featuring the Dragon Slayers and have enlisted the teens to help with safety presentations, Duxbury said.

Troopers are trying to figure out a way to get the teens to village schools all over the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta he said. Alcohol-related violence, injury and neglect are serious problems throughout the region. Nearly every call troopers respond to involves alcohol, Duxbury said. Kids sometimes show up drunk for school.

The Dragon Slayer program is an opportunity to stem some of that tragedy, Duxbury said. The hope is that at-risk kids will see "that these kids are on the ball, they're my age, they come from where I do, and I can be something too, " he said.

Brown is "a great shepherd, " Duxbury said. "He's a quite humble man who wants to do this work so these kids can be the shining stars."

THE CAREER CONNECTION

Aniak High School has tailored its curriculum to boost the Dragon Slayer program. It offers anatomy and physiology and a class to certify students in emergency trauma training, said LeMaster, who teaches the courses and was instrumental in bringing them to the school.

There's also a procedure that allows the Dragon Slayers -- who are on call around the clock -- to leave class without question when a serious call comes in, said high school principal Ted VanBronkhorst.

Dragon Slayers have to maintain passing grades and vow to abstain from drugs and alcohol. The program builds self-esteem and keeps the teens busy, VanBronkhorst said. "Busy people have less time for poor decisions."

The Dragon Slayers also are exposed to the medical field and learn skills that might one day land them a job. "That career connection is the biggy for us at the school, " VanBronkhorst said.

And not without reason. April Kameroff, 21, was inspired by her brother to become a Dragon Slayer in 1999. Four days after she graduated from high school, the local Clara Morgan Subregional Clinic offered her a job, she said. Today she's a medical lab assistant studying to become a lab technician. She's also certified to teach CPR.

Being a Dragon Slayer "gave me this great job, " Kameroff said recently, sitting in her office in a crisp white lab coat.

There are other success stories: Jeremiah, Brown's son and one of the original Dragon Slayers, is now a U.S. Navy rescue swimmer. His sister Mariah is training to be a combat medic. Another former Dragon Slayer is a firefighter paramedic in Atlanta, LeMaster said, and another woman is training in Fairbanks to become one. A fourth woman is studying to become a pharmacist. Three other Dragon Slayers have chosen to stay in the village. They all continue to volunteer at the fire department.

The Dragon Slayers are "saving their own lives by helping others, " LeMaster said.

The fact that the school supports the program is only a small part of its success, the school principal said. Brown and LeMaster "have been wonderful" about making the program work, VanBronkhorst said. They're dedicated and qualified and have a vision. Without them, the program wouldn't have a chance, he said. "This is something they have made their calling."

Brown is "the main ball of wax, " LeMaster said. "Everybody respects Pete. There's probably not a person here who he has not helped and for free. He's as solid as an oak. He's the father or grandfather many of these kids never had."

Brown's teaching philosophy was perhaps best demonstrated one Tuesday night at the fire station. Several kids and a few adult volunteers had just finished hoisting a plastic litter from the floor to the loft, as they might during a mountain rescue, and had moved on to rappelling. Some of the kids were afraid to try. Brown wouldn't let them give up. He guided them step by step, until they were safely on the ground.

" ‘I don't, ' ‘I can't, ' ‘I don't know how' -- those aren't accepted here, " he explained quietly to a nearby adult.

NATIONAL ROLE MODELS

As in most places, the majority of calls that come in to the Aniak Fire Department are routine -- people with trouble breathing, for example. A Dragon Slayer's job is primarily to give oxygen, take vitals, help put patients on backboards, fetch supplies and talk to people to help keep them calm.

For a long time, few people outside Aniak knew about the Dragon Slayers. That all changed in fall 2001, when one of those rare and terrifying calls came in.

Two teenage boys collided on their four-wheelers downriver near Kalskag. One of the teens had a broken neck. The other had a broken back, fractured skull, punctured lung and a flap of skin peeled away on his head, Brown said. A thick fog made it impossible to reach the boys by air. "We had to go by boat or we thought we would lose them, " Brown said.

Dragon Slayers Patricia Yaska and April Kameroff, 15 and 19 at the time, were called out just before midnight to assist Brown and a health aide with the call. The group took boats downriver. They reached the boys about two hours later and stabilized them until more help arrived. The call lasted 17 hours. One boy had to have a needle put in his chest to relieve pressure and help him breath. The Dragon Slayers helped save the boys' lives, Brown said.

The Tundra Drums newspaper in Bethel mentioned the harrowing rescue a month later. "Teens Form Lifesaving Squad with Life-Changing Effects, " the headline read.

Four months later, there was an article in Reader's Digest about this exotic Alaska village and the brave kids called Dragon Slayers. ("It was dark. Not even a moon to light the way. Patricia Yaska and April Kameroff perched nervously in a boat slowly snaking down Alaska's chilly Kuskokwim River.")

Other media latched onto the fact that the Dragon Slayers were all girls -- a point of pride among the girls to this day, even though at least one boy joined the team this year. (The girls like to joke that boys lack a certain part of their anatomy for the job.)

"They took their jobs out of necessity when no one else would, " a Chicago television station reported in 2002. "Just typical teenage girlfriends, only their clubhouse is the firehouse. ... The fashion of choice for the high schoolers: a harness, a helmet and a big yellow jacket."

The writer from the teen magazine YM was sassier: "Pete recruited high school kids; only boys signed up. ... Three years later, girls started to join, and the guys began quitting. Unbelievably (and kind of pathetically), they didn't want to work with females. But after meeting girls like Falina Morris, I decided that the guys were intimidated."

In December 2002, People magazine flew five of the Dragon Slayers to New York City to receive an award for community service. "They were extremely excited, " Brown said. "They met a bunch of movie stars. They got a standing ovation."

People magazine noted in a story that the Dragon Slayers hadn't let all the media attention go to their heads. "They still hang at the fire station, where they do homework, feast on chips and sodas and dance with "Choking Charlie, " the mannequin on which they learned the Heimlich Maneuver."

A Rippling Effect

Brown said the Dragon Slayers are good about ignoring the hoopla and staying focused on calls.

Lemaster has tried unsuccessfully to parley all the coverage into a college scholarship fund for the Dragon Slayers. "These girls don't have any money, " he said.

While not very lucrative, the media coverage has helped get more kids interested in the program, Brown said.

The Dragon Slayers are no longer the youngest volunteers at the Aniak Fire Department.

There are now the Lizard Killers -- Dragon Slayers in training -- and even the Fire Flies, elementary school-age kids. Each team meets once a week at the station and then together as a group on Tuesday nights.

"We kind of have this seamless thing happening, " said Thomas Brock, who teaches kindergarten and first grade in the village and is an 18-year veteran of the fire department.

Brock played a video of his students, who all looked to be between 5 and 6 years old, in action during Fire Prevention Week in October.

It starts with Level, the skeleton, lying on the classroom floor. "There's a patient down" an adult voice booms and four little kids in red plastic fire hats walk onto the scene.

The children kneel on one side of Level and get ready to roll him. Two other youngsters approach with a long, adult-size backboard. A little girl, half as tall as Level is long, stabilizes the skeleton's head in her tiny hands and then gives her classmates the OK.

"One, two, three ... easy roll, " she says, and the children roll Level onto the backboard and strap him down. Once he is secured, they each grab a section of the backboard.

"One, two, three ... easy up, " the little girl says, and off they go to the ambulance. The children take Level to the local clinic where they give a patient report.

Brock, a teacher of 25 years, said kindergarten to first grade is the perfect time to introduce kids to lifesaving skills, especially in rural Alaska.

"If you're upriver in a really small village, you've got to have immediate emergency care, " Brock said. What the kids learn in class might save a life.

The lessons teach other skills too, Brock said. When the children secure Level to the backboard, for example, they're learning to tie. The patient report teaches reading, writing and communication skills. The children respond well to the lessons, Brock said. "They're like little sponges."

Brown gets a surprise

In February, the Dragon Slayers appeared on the Oprah Whinfrey show.

The day of the broadcast, nearly every student in the high school crowded into LeMaster's classroom to watch.

Everyone knew about the show because Oprah flew Brown to Chicago for the taping a few days before.

Brown was told the show was about teens who do amazing things, which wasn't exactly true. It was about how one man had inspired a group of Alaska teens to do amazing things.

Brown didn't find that out until he sat down next to Oprah onstage. There was a guest appearance by Brown's daughter Mariah, and then Oprah announced that the Aniak Fire Department was going to be the owner of a new Land Rover.

Brown said later he was grateful but also a little puzzled. What do you do with a Land Rover in a place that has only six miles of roads?

Erinn was interviewed on the Oprah show too.

She echoed what she had said a few nights before at training: "Pete's awesome. He's brought us so far. ... He made something of us."

Brown, who didn't know who or what Oprah was until recently (he still calls her "Opera"), says all the media attention has been a little overwhelming.

He said he never imagined things would get this big. He said it just goes to show that if you believe in kids and give them the tools and guidance they need to make their way in the world, they can do anything.

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Reporter Tataboline Brant can be reached at tbrant@adn.com and 257-4321. Photographer Marc Lester can be reached at mlester@adn.com or 257-4331.

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