Pioneer guard gets hands on experience during summer employment

Platteville, Wis.- University of Wisconsin-Platteville women's basketball junior Aspyn Stewart knew she wanted to do something in law enforcement and forensic investigation when she was a freshman at Stockton High School in Stockton, Illinois.  Her father is Chief of Police in Stockton, so she has been around law enforcement most of her life.  After her freshman year at UW-Platteville, Stewart began working at Apple Canyon Lake (ACL) where she put her law enforcement knowledge to work and learned new skills.

"During my high school career, I played softball, volleyball and basketball so, I didn't have time to fit in a job," Stewart said.  "Somebody mentioned a job at ACL and be a part of the safety and security team.  I needed a job after my freshman year of college and said 'OK let's do this' and it felt like it would get my foot in the door because we would get to work with the county EMS and law enforcement services."

ACL is a secluded area on the 400-acre Apple Canyon Lake located in the northwestern part of Illinois.  ACL sits on 2,700 acres with 2,200 individual housing units and is known for great bass and walleye fishing.  Boating, water skiing, hiking trails, camping area and a public golf course are some other amenities ACL offers.

"ACL is a private homeowner association, we have security 24/7," Safety and Security Manager of ACL and Stewart's supervisor Julie Janssen said.  "Aspyn is a safety and security officer, at minimum our officers need a first responders license due to our location and the fact that the nearest ambulance is 25 minutes away.  It is super important that our staff can provide good basic life support until an ambulance or medical helicopter can arrive."

Stewart's first ride along at ACL involved an all-terrain vehicle (ATV) accident and a medivac transport.  "What totally got her hooked on the job was when she did her first ride along with us," Janssen said.  "We were paged to a UTV accident, and the patient smacked their face pretty good on the pavement.  It was an intense call, and Aspyn was with us for it.  We ended up calling in a helicopter for transport.  After the call Aspyn was 'all right, this is cool, I want to be a part of this if this how my every night at work is going to be, it's pretty awesome', and I was like 'What? not every night is going to be like this', but I thought that it was a pretty good first impression for her."

Part of the job required Stewart to become an Emergency Medical Responder (EMR), also known as first responder.  "I started doing ride alongs with the county guys on medical calls and loved it," Stewart said.  "I was able to work at ACL during the summer and take the class to get my license as an EMR."

Stewart saw a wide range of medical calls, from a simple lift assist of an elderly patient to motor vehicle accidents.  "We have a lot of broken bones, car accidents due to a lot of gravel roads the ATV's traveling on them, and just the normal sickness where they need to get to a hospital to be treated, it really does range to simple stuff to severe traumas," Stewart said.

Janssen saw Stewart grow in her position from her first summer to this past summer. "Her first season with us she worked security on the ATV and golf cart trails and picked things up easy with being from a law enforcement family, and this year she did boat patrol," she said.  "She had to learn to drive a boat and maneuver a boat and gain confidence on the water.  Our boating season was absolutely bananas due to COVID, and she had to get confident doing it and working with her team.  I was really proud of how she handled her position, and it will help her out in the long run.  Her first summer she was not doing anything by herself as she was working on her EMR license.  She had a team to fall back on, but now she is doing more on her own and jumping in on incidents on the water or taking the squad and responding to calls by herself.

As Stewart enters her third year as a member of the Pioneer women's basketball team, she has confident in her ability on the court from her life experience at ACL.  "My mentality now is everything will happen and anything can happen," she said.  "You have to have an open mindset and not get frustrated or upset.  I have seen really bad incidents.  I can't just focus on the incident; your focus is helping this person.  Seeing some of my friends get into these bad accidents was a reality check; and the first incident was like HOLY COW, this is what I am going to be seeing all the time, so get used to it.  That is how it is with basketball; things won't always go your way; you got to understand that and make the change and adjustment to get better."

While Stewart gained confidence for the upcoming season, Janssen saw her confidence and ability flourish due to her being a student-athlete.  "I had a son who was a student-athlete, so I knew what to expect and can see the difference in the students who play sports in college and those who didn't," she said.  "Her confidence level is more prevalent than maybe the newer kids who just got done with their EMR class.  She communicates really well with her team and can tell she has been around team work; she is around her basketball teammates and out here it is kind of the same thing.  We need to be on the same page and what is going on and where stuff is happening.  It normally is not one person, we all got to work together, everyone is on the boat or on the trails working a launch, in the squad car responding to a scene; we all got to be on the same page.  I definitely see as a student-athlete she is much more confident with herself around people.  This is a people person profession."

COVID also gave Stewart a glimpse of what going back to campus would be like with new safety protocols put into place.  "I would say the biggest thing for me is I have learned safety," she said. "I know the only person you can keep safe is yourself.  It is hard to stay consistent with the new things that come out.  It seemed every day we had new protocols and we had to go through them as a collective group.  With the new protocols; it was like, ok, this is what we have to do; let's do it.  We didn't want to forget to do one of the steps and get put into quarantine if you were in contact with somebody with COVID, so it was super crucial to know everything and be sure that you knew everything," she said.

With the seclusion and distance of the nearest ambulance, ACL will utilize medivacs quite often.  These medivacs can come from Rockford, Illinois; Dubuque Iowa or Madison, Wisconsin.  One of the things Stewart trained on this summer is the safe use of a medivac.  "We do airlift a lot of people at this job, and when I do my shift for Stockton EMS, we had a medivac every Monday night in August.  We had a training session with Air Care 3 out of Dubuque, Iowa to learn what they want and get everyone on the same page," she said.

It is something Janssen echoed "We got Air Care out in August, it is a nice training, when you are in an emergency you are in awe to get that helicopter there.  It is nice to sit down and visit and go over expectations because the crews are different and how they want the scene worked and how they like their landing zones.  It was a great training and we got a cool photo with the aircraft."

Part of being on the water patrol, Stewart did have some normalcy in her day-to-day duties, but that can change in a heartbeat.  "Her daily assignments would vary; it all depended on where she was assigned to," Janssen said.  "She could be checking stickers to make sure there are no illegal boats on the lake, checking to ensure the boats had the required safety equipment on board to assuring boats were not parked in a private dock.  There is so many day-to-day activities people can do here, our number one job was to have a presence and provide safety.  A day can have nothing happening and seem quiet, and all of sudden you are slammed."

Stewart had the visions of going into law enforcement.  "My dream job would be working for Illinois State Police Crime Scene Department," she said.  Then Stewart took a few classes and had conversations with Illinois troopers that had her thinking differently.  "As I went through some classes and started learning things and talking with different troopers, Homeland Security in Washington D.C. is up there now," she said.

Then after two summers doing security and patrol at ACL?  "Going into the military has been sitting in the back of my head, so if I do go to the military I would either go into military police or I am going to do crime scene with a paramedic, so I would be a combat medic," Stewart said. "My dad has a guy that works in the department; he was a combat medic and he can do everything; it is fascinating, because one, you have to be pretty smart to do it and two, which I learned, you don't think you just do it, there is no time to think."

With the different options and jobs Stewart has her eye on, the position at ACL has giving her the opportunity to position herself for whatever path she decides.  "She is lucky to have such a unique job at her age," Janssen said.  "I know that this job is a stepping stone job for whatever our staff wants to do.  I have a staff member who is in nursing school and another just graduated from nursing school.  The experience they get with us is pretty spectacular, you get to deal with people, our sheriff office, you get to deal with a lot of different things that can lead to a lot of different things, it is pretty cool."

Stewart's advice to anybody thinking about volunteering for EMS or a position at ACL:  "If people have the opportunity to do something good, they should do this because it really helps balance your mental stability and teaches you to appreciate everything you have and appreciate the people that are around you."

Photo Courtesy of Aspyn Stewart and Pioneer Athletics