Today we revisit the life and times of Rural Metro Fire Capt. Randy Wilson. On April 6, 2020, he was featured as an Our Town Hero. He was a lieutenant then. His recent promotion to captain is a change. And that’s a chump change to what happened on October 2021 when a doctor told him, “You’re a walking contradiction. You should be dead.”

When he’s not at a Rural Metro station in the warmer months, he’s busy with his own business – Ruff-N-Tuff Lawn Service. After mowing lawns and yards on a hot July day, he headed home for a shower and was enjoying having a few friends over until a protracted coughing spell hit him.

“I kept coughing and coughing and couldn’t stop and I started coughing up dark blood in clots,” he says. He is a longtime paramedic and knew this was serious. “I called (Rural Metro) dispatch to find out which hospital had the shortest wait in their ER and it was Methodist in Oak Ridge so a friend at the house drove me there.”

Wilson refers to this as “a significant medical event.” It did not take long for doctors to diagnose his problem — bilateral PEs. “I had a pulmonary embolism (blood clot) in each lung and the one in my right lung was significantly larger than the other one.”

He spent three days in the hospital while blood thinners and his body eliminated the clots. “It helped a lot that I was healthy then at age 42 (he’s 46 now). I’ll be on blood thinners the rest of my life. I didn’t have any chest pains and after the clots were gone, I felt great. Still do. I missed between one and two months of work.”

Wilson says: “I’ve run plenty of emergency calls where someone had a PE and died. I knew full well what the consequences could be. It was a perfect storm. I had no warning signs, no symptoms at all and I now know I have a genetic condition that predisposes me to blood clots. I have to be more careful at work about getting cuts because of the bleeding issue. If we have to cut someone out of a car, I step back and let the guys in my crew handle that.”

Rural Metro Capt. Randy Wilson flanked by firefighters William Wiwczaroski, left, and Ben Lincoln at Station 27 in East Knox County

In 2022 another health scare came along. He describes it with these words: “… I almost burnt my face off.” He was trying to ignite a small brush fire in the middle of the summer 2022 and mistakenly poured some gasoline on the debris. “When I lit the debris, it created a flash fire and I had first, second and third-degree burns on my face and the left side of my neck,” he says. “It was not fun. He missed a month or two of work again and says he took OxyContin for several weeks. Because it was a flash fire, he has no permanent scar damage to his face.

Those stories told; he had another change recently. On Oct. 22, 2024, he was promoted to the rank of captain, one of 18 Rural Metro captains. In this new job he supervises the Blue Shift at Stations 25 (Mascot), 26 (Strawberry Plains) and Squad 27 (East Knox County), his home station.

“I have great crews and I help out when I’m needed,” he says. “Lt. Kevin Cate is at Station 25 and he’s a great partner. With the promotion comes more paperwork and administrative responsibilities, but I love it. My 28 years of insight and experience help me a lot. I have an old-school mentality and the new technology challenges me. But I expect everyone to give it their best. Anything less than 150% is a failure in my book – me included.”

Wilson started with Rural Metro in 1996 when he was 18 as a reserve firefighter living at Station 31 in Powell. In 2000, Randy was hired as a full-time firefighter as he pursued his paramedic license and was assigned to Station 30 in Halls. In 2021, he was promoted to the position of Lieutenant over Station 25 in Mascot.

He admits to having a bad case of OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) and that leads to his other first responder jobs. He works shifts at AMR on ambulances as a paramedic, volunteers 40 hours a month as a reserve deputy for the Knox County Sheriff’s Office, serving on patrol, and as a member of the department’s fire investigator unit. This is his 17th year at KCSO. For 16 years he’s worked for Ballad Health as a paramedic at Bristol Motor Speedway’s infield during all NASCAR events.

“Randy Wilson is one of the hardest working and most dedicated professionals I have ever seen in my career (here),” Rural Metro spokesman Capt. Jeff Bagwell said. “He’s great at whatever the job is and is a very effective leader. He can do it all.”

If you missed our first Hero story about Wilson, here is a link to that article.

Tom King has been the editor of newspapers in Texas and California and also worked in Tennessee and Georgia. If you have someone you think we should consider featuring as an Our Town Hero, please email him at the link with his name or text him at 865-659-3562.