Who is the most amazing person you know?

The most amazing person I have known died last year in his 80s: Art McDole. He hired me as a 9-1-1 dispatcher in 1977, which was the beginning of my career in Public Safety Communications. He was a pioneer in Emergency Communications, bringing county-wide 9-1-1 and consolidated dispatching of law enforcement, fire services and EMS to the Central California Coast in Monterey County. There is a room named for him at the APCO HQ in florida, and APCO has an award for pioneering work named for him. From Art, I learned so much. I've transitioned from Baisic 9-1-1 to Enhanced 9-1-1 services, from handwritten radio logs to state-of-the-art Computer Aided Dispatch systems, worked through major disasters such as the Pebble Beach Fire in the mid-80s, the Loma Prieta Earthquake in '89, participated in the planning and implementation of the Pope's visit and sermon at Laguna Seca... Oh, just some amazing events. Art was a gentleman with a wickedly wry sense of humor. I left Monterey County after he retired with 41 hears of service, but he still worked for APCO as a Frequency Coordinator for Public Safety for many years. We saw each other at meetings, or conferences, or other functions - he always acknowledged me with warmth.

Art was a smart man who relished in learning new technology. He was known in other countries as being a Father of 9-1-1 systems well-respected and honored all over the world. I am proud to cave been one of his "kids.". The fact that he was proud of me as I progressed in my career, even when I changed agencies, says so much about him. Google his name some time.
 
I don't know if I'm "the most amazing person I know" but as I'm nearing the end of my time in Buffalo, I have to remind myself that I was pretty "amazing" myself for having gotten through it.

I decided to go back to school a few years back, but then was also offered a job here, and decided to relocate from Long Island and make a go of it (and go to school here, instead of where I'm from). I moved to Buffalo June 1, 2009.

The job turned into a nightmare -- not as it was described, on the verge of collapse. I worked 70 hours a week for five weeks, until I was fired when the owner heard from someone else that, after still not receiving a paycheck, I was going to start looking for something else. July 5, 2009 -- unemployed in a non-thriving city 400 miles from home. I'm still owed almost $1k in back pay.

I filed for unemployment, had it contested twice by the lying conman of a boss I had, and I won both times. In any case, I snatched up the first crappy job I could find, and postponed my enrollment for one semester as I tried to sort everything out.

That next crappy job I found wasn't satisfactory, but it (barely) allowed me to pay my bills while I looked for something else. I found something marginally better, and figured it'd have to do. Classes began for me January 2010, and financial aid (at that time, in the form of student loans) helped me scrape by. Finding out that my current crappy job would all but evaporate come summer, I decided to take a full-time load of credits so that I'd be able to get another student loan dispersal to pay my rent and bills until the work came back. In hindsight, I probably should have just filed for unemployment for the summer, but until I came to Buffalo, the "unemployment insurance" option was simply something I had never entertained, and did so only when severely hard-pressed by what happened here. So I got by.

Come January 2011, I had come to learn that the only reason I was able to scrape by was because I was using my student loan money to cover some of my bills. When I reapplied for the following school year, I noticed a little increase in my eligibility, because I was making so much less money in Buffalo than I did when I worked in Manhattan. The second school year's student aid was based on five months of Manhattan-income and seven months of Buffalo-income. If I decided to stay for a third year, I'd be submitting only Buffalo-income, and would become eligible for grant money. I gritted my teeth and decided to extend my time here one more year, but would have to find a better job for my final year so as to save money for getting out of here.

May 2011 -- I'm walking past a beautiful restaurant with patio seating and decide to look it up online. The menu and prices indicate a much better level of clientele (and income for a server), so I apply. I receive back a request for an interview that same day. I go down and get hired (I have a lot of experience in restaurants, and not just as a server but also in office/management). The business is more consistent, the shifts are longer and more exhausting, but it's what I need to do, so I do it. Over the summer I trained and got experienced with their style and selections, and started making much better money. I opted to have my credit card tips added to my paycheck, which was direct-deposited into my checking account, rather than taking cash home every night. The previous experience of "barely getting by" was so in-grained that I didn't know what to do with the extra money, so I just started paying rent in advance. By Thanksgiving, I had paid rent through the following March.

Now my last semester is about half-over, and I'm looking ahead to moving to the town where my first-choice graduate school is located. I've achieved a 3.8 GPA, worked 9-12 hours a week in a psychology research lab at my school since January 2011, focused my goals (long- and short-term), worked almost full-time hours most weeks at my job, and have over $8k saved toward moving and relocation expenses. All this less than three years after worrying that I was about to be flat broke and on the street because I was conned into a job offer with false information by someone who later skipped town and is being chased by multiple lawsuits. The only help I received was a $300 loan from a friend (paid back two months later), three weeks of unemployment, and the student loans and grant money I received for attending college -- everything else I earned and saved. I learned that I am stronger than I thought, and that having gotten through this, I can get through other stuff that doesn't seem nearly as challenging or scary. "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." So right now, I'm feeling pretty amazing.

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Yep thats amazing, you will go far in life with such determination.
Keep on keeping on
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My uncle Ed Limato, a true American success story. Went from working in mailroom to president of company, making him one of the most powerfull people in Hollywood.
 

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