- I know firsthand.

It could go bad that quickly.

You gotta respect life and you gotta work with what it's given you, and you gotta give back to it.

(simple sparse music) Nevada is just, it's so different than what I've always been in.

Out here it's just, I take it as it comes.

Aside from when people drift over on the highway out there and you hear that zzzzzzzzz, it took awhile to get used to.

When I first pictured Nevada in my mind, I just pictured a flat desert with a cactus here and there, you know?

And it wasn't anything like that when I got out here.

Worked in the oil field and the welding industry and stuff for a long time and thought that was gonna be my big life, and then was in a automobile accident in 1982 and that turned my life around.

Wound up in a hospital for about eight months and got out and moved in with my nurse, and we had a son.

And then we got married and got divorced.

And I got interested in medicine and I decided, hey, I'm gonna be a paramedic.

I wanna learn how to help people.

I worked out in the street, in the mud, and the blood and the guts.

There's nothing like waking up at three o'clock in the morning to go who-knows-where to find God-knows-what laying in a ditch in a car upside down, you know, It just, it was a thrill that you got addicted to it.

It was just so fun to be able to help people.

(soft music) My son, he was in college at Middle Tennessee State University.

And he had joined the Army, and from all things I saw was ready to go.

But my phone started ringing off the hook, and we're not supposed to have our phones on while we're at work.

And the supervisor come up and he said, "You might have to go home and find out what's going on."

And so I thought, am I bein' fired?

And he said, "No."

He said, "Just go home.

Just go home."

He said, "We've got it taken care of."

And I got home and my roommate's standin' there with a cigarette in both hands.

(laughs) I walked in and I said, “Well what's goin' on?” And he said, "Call Diana."

And when he said that I knew somethin' was wrong.

I mean, as many times as I've had to go up to people and inform them that their family member or someone didn't make it, they never trained us how to deal with it when it was our own.

Mmmm, you know, that's why, why I say I try to make up thinkin' that he didn't know what was gonna happen if he pulled that trigger.

(metal detector beeps) I went into a bad depression.

I just had a bad feelin' about how come I couldn't save my own son, and comin' out here I wanted to run away from his death.

I was real paranoid.

I was afraid people wouldn't like me, and I've always wanted to be a person that someone could like and trust and depend on.

Once talkin' with them and learnin' about everyone, it's great.

There's always somethin' I can do around here, even if it's just goin' over and walkin' her dogs.

I'm helpin'.

Takin' care of the stray cats and stuff around here.

Cats are my, they're my buddies.

Well you scarfed it down so fast how█d you even take a time to get a breath?

There's probably not a person in this park that can't say that they haven't helped me in one way or another or I haven't helped them with somethin'.

(simple sparse music) These two are evidently the ones that didn't make it.

They must not have been able to fly when they got out of there.

Well, you don't know what's gonna happen to you the next day, you know.

Nevada, it's my home now, and it's gonna be my home until Nevada kicks me out.