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0 of 3 Premium Clicks used this month SUBSCRIBE Print + Online Subscriber Activation | Register x Forgot Password | Need an Account? subscribe | newsletter | deals Classifieds Jobs Autos Real Estate FEATURED » NEWS NOW Fire department adds plug-in vehicle to fleet ... Four tips teachers told me that made my life better ... Ashland High senior flips life script after surviving car crash ... Fire department adds plug-in vehicle to fleet ... Four tips teachers told me that made my life better ... Ashland High senior flips life script after surviving car crash ... FINDING HIS PASSION Ashland High senior flips life script after surviving car crash Jett Hamik went from wanting to play baseball to wanting to be a firefighter, for which he just landed a major scholarship Comment By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings Follow @@Joe_Zavala99 DailyTidings.com By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings Follow @@Joe_Zavala99 Posted Apr. 24, 2016 at 6:00 PM Updated Apr 24, 2016 at 8:09 PM By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings Follow @@Joe_Zavala99 Posted Apr. 24, 2016 at 6:00 PM Updated Apr 24, 2016 at 8:09 PM » Social News The boy stands before an audience of 10. He’s wearing a white long-sleeve button-up, powder-blue tie, charcoal gray slacks. He’s clean-cut, with a little stubble on the chin. His skin is bronzed by the sun, under which he spends almost every afternoon. It’s the most important presentation he’s ever delivered at Ashland High School, but only his third or fourth most important in the last three weeks. And that’s obvious. His smile is sincere, easy. He understands his subject intimately. He cares. Clearly, it’s more than a senior project to him. It’s a passion. But it wasn’t always that way. To Jett Hamik, his path in life up until Mother’s Day 2015 was laid out before him like the dimensions of a baseball diamond, measured to the inch and decorated with the finely crushed chalk of genetics, desire and about 12 years worth of good old-fashioned muscle memory. He was going to play ball. That much was certain. At which college and for how long had yet to be determined, but those details would all be worked out later by Jett and his parents, Josh and Allison Hamik, who met when Josh caught for the Washington State University baseball team and believed in their son as much as he believed in himself, probably more. But on that overcast spring afternoon all those hopes and aspirations were set aside as the Jett Hamik and his father rolled down Interstate 5 southbound in a 2001 Toyota Tundra, a gift to Jett from his grandfather. Jett and Josh Hamik were driving it back to Ashland from Seattle, Jett in the driver’s seat because, well, it was his now. The dark gray rig wasn’t exactly fresh off the lot, but it was new to Jett, it looked good and it had a canopy in back, perfect for protecting the small mountain of catcher’s gear Jett lugged back and forth to practices and games every day. The truck would serve Jett well for the rest of his time at Ashland High School and eventually at whichever college he chose. At least that was the plan. So there they were, proud father, teenage son, chasing a future they both knew was only just past the horizon. You could almost see it. The Class 5A state playoffs were just around the corner, then American Legion ball, then college visits, signing day, a moving picture of the American dream. The drive had been going well, albeit slowly. The truck was shaking a little, so they stopped in Cottage Grove, checked things out, gave the tires a little air and continued. No worries. Jett took it easy after that, tried to keep it under 65 mph just to be safe. The radio was on and they were talking about nothing in particular, at least nothing they remember now, which is understandable considering what happened next. Right around milepost 158, Jett Hamik was steering the truck through a bend in the road when three things happened, one right after another. First, Josh Hamik, sensing they were going a little too fast — he estimated 65 to 70 mph — told Jett to slow down. Next, the rear driver-side tire blew, and Jett (“His eyes got as big as saucers,” his dad said) fought the steering wheel with everything he had trying to guide them safely onto the shoulder of the road, which he likely would have done if not for the third thing: the tire tread spun off the wheel and jammed the axle, causing the back end to lock up. “It was in slow motion,” Josh Hamik said. The truck spun a full 180 degrees while still on the freeway before flipping off the shoulder and across a grass field, tumbling some 30 yards and rolling three or four times before finally coming to a stop upside down. Neither seatbelts locked like they were supposed to, so as the truck tumbled the Hamiks pinballed inside the cab. “We were just kind of freefalling,” Jett Hamik said, “and I was just kind of holding onto the steering wheel, holding on for dear life. My life sort of flashed before my eyes.” Josh Hamik was holding the truck’s passenger side grab handle, as was his habit, when it all started, a choice he believes may have saved him from further harm, or worse. Still, his head smashed through the side window and his right arm was mangled, broken in two places and filleted open below the elbow. In the foggy aftermath, both were stunned but conscious and quickly realized they couldn’t exit out the front because both front doors were crushed shut. Instead, they squeezed out the back sliding window. The canopy had flown free, so they were outside in minutes, and it was while they were climbing out that Josh Hamik first noticed the severity of his arm injury. It was bent at a hideous angle — a compound fracture. And there was blood. Lots of it. Jett Hamik looked himself over and was almost shocked to realize he had escaped unharmed. In fact, the only injury he sustained during the whole ordeal was a sore wrist, but that doesn’t really count — he did it to himself, punching the side of the truck in frustration after climbing to safety. “While it was going I wasn’t really scared because I didn’t know what was going on until after we stopped rolling,” Jett Hamik said, “and that’s when I kind of had to freak out a little bit. …I looked at my dad and he was bleeding and had a compound fracture in his wrist, and that kind of set me off. I had a little rampage, punched the side of the car with adrenaline. I didn’t know what to do and was trying to figure it all out.” Several drivers pulled over and the police were called in minutes. It didn’t take long for an ambulance to show up, and one of the good Samaritans even stumbled upon Jett Hamik’s still functional cell phone, which he used to call his mom. The Hamiks were shaken and Josh Hamik had months of rehabilitation to look forward to, but they had survived a violent accident on the freeway, the kind of crash that can kill. Often, a traumatic experience like that can change a person’s whole outlook on life. In Jett Hamik’s case, it was both the accident and their awful experience in the hours immediately after which served as the catalyst for his own recalibration. The first responders — two men — that showed up worked for a private service unaffiliated with a hospital, and the detachment and general disinterest with which they carried themselves frustrated the Hamiks, particularly Jett, whose concern for his father was growing by the minute. Josh Hamik suffered an injury that eventually required a rod be inserted into his arm, yet did not receive pain medication until well after arriving at the hospital. And only 10 minutes into the drive to Roseburg’s Mercy Medical Center one of the emergency medical technicians said, “Oh no, it’s happening again,” before veering off to the shoulder. The ambulance had broken down. Things didn’t get much better after another ambulance picked them up and drove them the rest of the way to the hospital – and even before shoving off again, the drivers argued outside the vehicle about whose turn it was to drive. Another, more serious accident occurred at around the same time and its victims were worse off, so Josh Hamik waited “for what felt like hours” in a gurney, his arm still splayed open as he pleaded for help. “They’d come back and say, ‘We’re really busy. We can’t help right now,’” he said. Allison Hamik picked up Jett, who was released; Josh stayed for the next day and a half as his arm was pieced back together. He suffered nerve damage and his physical therapy is ongoing. For Jett, the damage was mostly psychological. It took some coaxing to get him into the car for the long drive home, and for months afterward he dreaded driving and relived the accident dozens of times through vivid nightmares. But the accident and everything that happened after impacted Jett Hamik in another way, too, and it’s that change which he hopes to carry forward, long after the flashbacks finally stop (he still gets them about once a month), after his back stops bugging him and, yes, after even his most glorious baseball exploits begin to fade from his memory. “It threw me off a little bit because I expect the people in that profession to be fully capable of helping out whoever they need to help out,” he said. “And so after the accident I decided that that was what I wanted to do, to get into firefighting and paramedicine, to be able to help people to the best in my ability and really make a difference in peoples’ lives. At a point where it could be the worst thing that could have happened to them I want to come in and help.” Only weeks before the accident. Allison and Josh Hamik asked Jett if he was interested in becoming a firefighter. It wasn’t a shot in the dark. Josh Hamik’s best friend from high school and college is an engineer at a station in Bellevue, Washington, and loves the job. Jett rejected the idea without a second thought. and everybody thought that was that. But a few months after the accident Jett did something he had never done before — he began to get proactive about something other than baseball. He wanted to give firefighting a shot, so he called a family friend who happens to work in a firehouse in Medford, Justin Fish, and asked to go on a ride-along. That was the first of what turned out to be five ride-alongs by Hamik — two in Medford, two in Ashland and one in Bellevue — but he can still recount almost every detail from that first call with station five, situated on the corner of Roberts Road and North Keene Way Drive in Medford, possibly because that’s the ride that confirmed his hunch that he had found his calling. “It was probably 10 minutes after I got to the station they got a call for a cardiac arrest in a (local) neighborhood,” he said. “And we get to the house, and Justin and Steve-o, one of his crew members, they go into the house and they’re helping him out. Just seeing (Fish) interact with the patient and help him and get him into the ambulance and off to the hospital really quickly, that’s what I want to do. I want to help people, and to see that firsthand kept my motivation going.” The next four ride-alongs only reinforced that notion and just like that, Hamik was charging headlong down a career path that’s about as competitive as they come. Indeed, with a median salary of about $47,000 and an education requirement of a high school diploma, fire stations will often receive hundreds of applicants for a single opening. For that reason, the fire science school one chooses to enter is crucial, and after researching the subject Hamik targeted Central Oregon Community College, whose structural fire science and emergency medical training school is considered, along with Chemeketa Community College in Salem, one of the top two such schools in the state. Then, Hamik learned of the Central Oregon Fire Agencies Joint Recruitment Scholarship, which awards several full scholarships to COCC and internships that include room and board at local fire stations. It would be the challenge of Hamik’s young life, he knew. Only fifty applicants would be selected to come to Bend and compete for the scholarships, and Hamik knew most of those hopefuls, if not all, would be older and more experienced than him. Further narrowing his room for error, each applicant is asked to name the firehouse they would most like to work at should they receive the scholarship, and Hamik placed at the top of his list the most sought-after fire district in central Oregon: Sisters-Camp Sherman. “I definitely felt a lot of pressure,” he said, “because there were 50 applicants and probably 90 percent of them put Sisters as their number one choice, which made me feel like my odds aren’t very good for this.” The testing, he learned, would take place April 8 in Bend, and Hamik decided to pour everything he had into preparing himself for what was to come. He also had a secret weapon: a handful of firehouse connections, most forged after he decided to turn his new passion into his senior project at Ashland High School. There was Tim Hegdahl with Ashland Fire & Rescue, the station in Bellevue and, of course, Fish. Once Fish and his fellow firefighters at station five learned of Hamik’s opportunity, they turned his preparation into a sort of station project, even going so far as to drive to another firehouse in order help Hamik master the dreaded keiser sled, a training device used by firefighters to simulate a forced entry which requires the firefighter to straddle a 160-pound beam and bash it a distance of five feet using a sledgehammer (it’s even more difficult than it sounds). The firefighters at station five also showed Hamik how best to tackle the other agility tests, helped him prepare for the written test, grilled him during mock interviews and offered tips on how he should dress. All of this took time, but Fish said Hamik had already proven that he was in it for the long haul. “A lot of times, kids (on ride alongs) are like, ‘Oh, this looks cool, I’ll look into this, or that looks cool, I’ll look into that,’” Fish said. “They’re just kind of looking, a ship without a rudder in a sense. They’re trying to figure out the direction they want to take their life. With Jett, you could tell it was more than that. It was something happened inside of him and it changed his life and it changed his perspective on life.” Allison Hamik noticed it, too. Suddenly, the 17-year-old who was dragging his feet on college applications and scholarship opportunities only months ago was taking ownership of his future, introducing himself, looking people in the eye, shaking hands, becoming a man. “He just started doing all of it on his own without us knowing,” Allison Hamik said. “He would tell us about it but it was all on his own and I could tell that that’s kind of what passion must look like, because I wasn’t seeing it through the (baseball) recruiting process like I thought I would see it.” All of Jett Hamik’s preparation paid off big time during the scholarship testing. He recorded the fifth-best time on a test which required him to haul a 50-pound bundle of hose up a four-story building twice, then walk to a ledge and pull up a third hose. He also fared well hauling a 180-pound dummy 20 yards, which immediately followed another hose haul. He passed the written exam with a 75 and survived the keiser sled, moving the beam the required distance with 34 blows. Hamik knew he had performed well enough to at least get a call back and was ecstatic when, only days after returning to Ashland, he was asked to head to Sisters for one more interview. His audience, he was told, would be Sisters-Camp Sherman Fire District deputy chief Tim Craig. The interview, held April 13, lasted all of six minutes and included five questions. Almost exactly 24 hours later, Hamik was sitting in a class at AHS when his phone rang, the same phone that was plucked from the grass by a stranger following the accident 11 months prior. He normally doesn’t check his phone at school, but he was waiting for the call and saw “Sisters, Oregon” flash on the screen, so he bolted outside to take it. On the other line was Craig, who told Hamik that he had won the scholarship and would be one of four scholarship winners stationed at Sisters-Camp Sherman, station 701. His three-year fire science schooling, including room and board, would be completely covered. Hamik will walk with the rest of Ashland High School’s class of 2016 on June 3. Two days later, he’s off to Sisters. “It was kind of surreal,” Hamik said of the phone call. “I couldn’t believe I got it and couldn’t believe that I was going to get this opportunity. Kind of shocked almost, but super excited.” On Friday, Hamik told the whole story, from the wreck to the scholarship, to a group of peers and community judges as part of his senior project, which is required of every AHS senior. Hamik’s presentation lasted about 20 minutes and included video footage of his test. In one clip, he dragged a fire hose away from the camera as onlookers cheered him on. In another, he chugged into a building carrying a hose. Had he been required to put together a similar project as a junior, the clips probably would have been very different and may have featured a particularly hard throw to catch a runner attempting to steal second base, or perhaps a line drive into the gap. No doubt, there’s a digital file somewhere. But a lot has happened in a year. Some bad, but mostly good. He still loves baseball and believes the Grizzlies can make a run in the state playoffs, maybe all the way to the state championship game, but his whole world isn’t wrapped up in that possibility. Not anymore. The same is true of his parents. Josh Hamik says it took about five minutes to let go of the future he thought he and his first-born would share. “It was shocking; I had to grieve,” he said. “I had a couple tears. And then I was so excited that I saw that passion for something like that.” “His whole life was about going to play baseball,” Allison Hamik said. “That’s what his dad did and that’s kind of the path he seemed to want to take. But then when I started to see this it started to dawn on me that I need him to be somewhere where he wants to be and not where he thought he wanted to be. “I’m still kind of mourning baseball, but in the end he even said, ‘Mom, baseball’s only going to be a couple more years of my life, and this is forever. This is the career I want to be in forever. I want to help people.’ How do you argue with that?” By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings Follow @@Joe_Zavala99 DailyTidings.com By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings Follow @@Joe_Zavala99 Posted Apr. 24, 2016 at 6:00 PM Updated Apr 24, 2016 at 8:09 PM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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