The Associated Press
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Like dozens of times before, Marian Thomas wasn’t sure what to expect when the coroner’s office called. Minutes later, she found herself next to the corpse of a man who had killed himself.
“I sat on the floor with the mother where he had just committed suicide,” Thomas said. “She held her son’s head in her lap and she asked me to hold his hand, so I sat there and held his hand.”
For the mother, it was a once-in-a-lifetime tragedy.
For Thomas, though, it was just another day on duty with Southern Nevada’s chapter of the Trauma Intervention Program, or TIP.
The program is a 19-year-old national nonprofit agency with more than 20 chapters in many Western states, Florida and Massachusetts.
The Las Vegas effort, which celebrates its 10th anniversary Tuesday, responds to roughly 120 emergencies a month and is considered the busiest chapter per capita in the country, said Thomas, crisis team manager for the local group.
Police officers, firefighters, hospitals and the coroner’s office call on the agency’s 45 volunteers around-the-clock to comfort and counsel a victim’s family, friends or co-workers in the wake of a tragedy, said Las Vegas Fire Department Deputy Chief Ken Riddle, who serves on the local TIP Advisory Board and who was instrumental in bringing the program to Las Vegas.
Volunteers, who receive 55 hours of training and are required to undergo a background check, range in age from teenagers to senior citizens. They are on call for three 12-hour shifts a month. They include retirees, real estate agents, homemakers, and medical personnel.
The volunteers may be asked to meet with a motorist shaken up after killing a pedestrian, an elderly person who lost a spouse of many years, parents whose child succumbs to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or the traumatized victims of a home-invasion robbery.
The national TIP program was launched in 1985 by Southern California clinical psychologist Wayne Fortin. He saw a need for it after treating patients who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder years after losing a loved one to an unexpected tragedy, Thomas said.
The program has been recognized by former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, Harvard University and the Ford Foundation, according to TIP literature.
The local chapter for years has been active in Las Vegas, Henderson and unincorporated Clark County, Riddle said. TIP responded to 20 percent more calls in 2003 than in 2002.
The program receives 9 cents from the county and cities for every resident in each jurisdiction. The group has an annual budget of about $100,000. Thomas is the agency’s only full-time employee; two part-time employees were hired within the past year, she said.
Riddle said local taxpayers are getting a great deal, in part because TIP volunteers free up police officers, firefighters and other emergency responders because they aren’t needed to stay with a distraught loved one of a victim.
“You have got strangers going out 24 hours a day in every kind of weather helping strangers. Their pay is a hug and a thank you, and they keep coming back for more,” Thomas said.