She drove past a fire truck one night.
Now she's the one saving lives inside it.

It was late. Kari Davis was driving home from doing chores at a friend's farm when a fire engine and an ambulance blew past her on the road. She watched their lights disappear in the dark. Then she thought: I might try that.

She called the Van Meter assistant fire chief the next day and asked about volunteering. He told her it was pretty much a show-up-and-have-a-pulse situation. So she showed up.

Two weeks later they sent her to the West Des Moines Fire Academy.

"It was anything but showing up and having a pulse," she says, laughing.

That was several years ago. Today, Kari Davis is a full-time firefighter and paramedic at Clive Fire, works part-time at Windsor Heights Fire, and still volunteers at the Van Meter department where it all started. She holds fire certifications, EMT credentials, and a paramedic license she put herself through school to earn. She has three cardiac arrest saves to her name. She has delivered a baby on a call. She has helped a woman whose apartment was flooding because her dad broke a pipe trying to change a showerhead.

Big calls and small ones. All of them matter to her.

Three Careers, One Thread

Before the fire service, Kari spent eight years as a diesel mechanic. She grew up on a cattle farm outside Van Meter — third generation to graduate from Van Meter High School — and tinkering with equipment was just part of life. She worked her way up to night shop supervisor at a mail contractor downtown. Then she burned out.

She made a turn into veterinary medicine. Eight years as an equine vet tech at Prairie Meadows, working with racehorses. She loved it. But it was seasonal, and she needed something steadier.

She went back to school. Again.

Looking back, she says she can see the thread. The vet tech work gave her medical terminology and a feel for medications that made EMT school click faster. The mechanic years gave her steady hands and a comfort with not knowing what you're walking into. The farm raised her to just get it done.

What a Shift Actually Looks Like

Kari aims to be at the station between 5:30 and 5:45 most mornings — a half hour before shift change. She checks the SCBA packs, runs through the truck, makes sure every piece of equipment is exactly where it should be. Morning roll call. House chores. The long-list apparatus check. Breakfast if there's time. Then you wait for calls.

People picture paramedics racing from crash to crash. The reality is different. The most common call at Windsor Heights and Clive is a fall — often at a nursing home or a senior living apartment. General sick person is second. The dramatic stuff happens, but it's not every shift.

What is every shift: the uncertainty. Kari gets dispatched to what sounds like a routine fall, and when she walks in, it's a cardiac arrest. You take in what you brought. You work with what you have. You call for support if you need it.

"I think a lot of it is just the uncertainty," she says. "We take supplies in with us, but when the information given to our dispatchers is incorrect, you're already a step behind."

The Saves She Gets to Carry

Kari has three cardiac arrest saves. That's three people who didn't have a heartbeat and do now.

She has met all three of them after they were released from the hospital. They came to the station. They talked.

She also delivered a baby on a home birth call. The baby had just arrived when Kari got there. She wrapped the newborn up and handed her to the mother.

These are the calls she holds onto. When someone asks about the hard ones — the pediatric calls, the patients she'd gotten to know who didn't make it — she gets quieter. She'll talk about it, but carefully. She wants people to understand something.

"I understand the public's curiosity about our worst calls," she says. "But it's very difficult to have people continue to ask us to relive our worst moments."

They are not characters in a TV show. They are people who went on those calls, drove home, fed their dogs, and came back the next day.

Beans, Bubba, and 48-Hour Shifts

Kari lives alone with two Dalmatians named Beans and Bubba. Beans is the younger one — calm, clingy, the kind of dog who will press himself against your leg on a hard day and just stay there. Bubba has more energy than either of them can fully explain.

"There are days they both drive me absolutely insane," she says. "It's hard to get a breath in with both of them right there. But they're pretty good dogs."

When Kari works a 48-hour shift, her mom and sister step up. They come over, take care of the dogs, and hold things together at home while she's at the station. It's a quiet piece of the story — the people behind the people who show up.

On her days off, she takes Beans and Bubba to Raccoon River Park and walks the lakes. She goes fishing. She plays ice hockey when her schedule allows — she tried out for the Central Iowa D League, got drafted, then played two seasons with the Des Moines Women's Hockey League. She once checked her EMS director into the boards so hard he got sent to the penalty box. She tells this story with obvious satisfaction.

One of the Women in the Room

When Kari first joined the fire service, she was one of two women at her department. She has been lucky, she says. The guys she's worked with have mostly operated on a simple standard: can you do the job? If yes, that's enough.

But she's clear-eyed about it.

Now there are four female firefighter/paramedics at Windsor Heights and three at Clive. The room is changing. She's part of why.

She also says the fire service made her a different person. She describes herself as "not very much of a type-A personality" — someone who had to push herself to walk into a stranger's home and take charge. She's been doing it for years now. It still means something to her that she learned how.

"Being in the fire service has helped me become more confident and more outgoing," she says. "Being the one that has to go in and make first contact — that's really pushed me to grow as a person."

What She Wants You to Know

If you feel chest pain, call. If one side of your body feels weak or numb or tingly and that's new — call. Racing heart rate, shortness of breath — call. "It's better to call and not need an ambulance," she says, "than to need one and wait." You don't have to be transported. You can just get checked.

If you have kids who are curious about fire trucks, call your local station. Ask for a tour. Kari believes those trucks belong to the community — the taxpayers own them — and people should be able to see inside. Most departments will say yes.

If you're thinking about becoming a firefighter or paramedic, reach out. Show up. DMACC has a fire science program. EMT school can be done in weeks. Paramedic takes a little over a year. Van Meter and departments like it are short on people and long on need.

"To me," she says, "this is the greatest job ever."

She means it. You can tell.

A farm kid from Van Meter who once watched a fire truck disappear into the dark and thought, maybe. Now she's the one driving away into someone else's emergency, her two Dalmatians waiting at home, her mom probably already on her way over.