The relationship between AMR-Ventura County and The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department is a strong one with over 18-years of dedicated teamwork.  The Sheriff’s Department helicopters are the only emergency flight resource that responds from within Ventura County and they are responsible for technical rescues, medical rescues, law enforcement, and even firefighting.  Since 1988, AMR-Ventura County’s paramedics have been serving as flight paramedics on the Sheriff’s Air Unit helicopters to help deliver rapid, advanced medical care to anyone of the over 750,000 citizens and countless visitors to Ventura County’s 1873 square miles.  Our paramedics work at the Sheriff’s Air Unit on a strictly volunteer basis and have donated thousands of hours since the program’s inception.  In addition to the rigorous training our paramedics have to go through in order to maintain their paramedic licenses, these same select few choose to attend hundreds of hours of training each year, which focuses on flight rescue (hoisting), ocean and swift water rescue, flight physiology, and helicopter safety.  Some of our paramedics are even trained in advanced night vision rescue, making them one of only a few groups in the country that perform this complex task, and perhaps the only group that does it on a volunteer basis.
 
One of the best things about living in a county like Ventura is the “small town” atmosphere that exists among the residents.  A partnership like the one between the Sheriff’s Department and AMR Ventura just exemplifies that closeness among the people that live here.  If you would like to know more about the Sheriff’s Air Unit and see some of the crew members in action, visit the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department website.