The make-do, early months of the Virginia Tech Rescue Squad were more ad hoc than sophisticated.

Rejected for membership in a local first-aid crew, the four students who founded the Virginia Tech Rescue Squad (VTRS) had to persuade multiple layers of administration, including University Council (UC), to approve them as a student organization. While mounting a letter-writing campaign to UC members in May 1970, the four cruised campus during the unrest over Vietnam, putting out fires and helping anybody who needed aid.

In fall 1970, squad founders had no other members, no money, and no headquarters, so they recruited and trained the first cadre. Members drove their own cars to calls and were not allowed to transport patients. (It would take two years of determined lobbying to procure that first ambulance.) Cooperation with other area squads was minimal.

In 1971, denied permission to sleep or store equipment in their “own room” at 342 Squires Student Center, rescue squad members often stashed first-aid kits and other paraphernalia above ceiling tiles and discreetly napped behind closed doors, according to Bob Smallwood (biology ’73), one of the squad’s founders.

Now, 48 years after Smallwood, Thomas Spain, Wayne Modena (industrial engineering and operations research ’73), and Richard Paul (management ’73) conceived the idea, VTRS is thought to be the oldest student-run, all-volunteer collegiate rescue squad in the nation—and a fully equipped advanced life support agency with three ambulances and a total of seven vehicles.