Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at a man who left his high-powered Wall Street job to become one of the best-trained paramedics in the country.
From millionaire to medic
In 2008, Jonathan Kleisner, a Wall Street trader, was about to reach the summit of Mount Rainier, in Washington State, when a series of events happened that would alter the course of his life.
Kleisner was running his own investment fund back in New York City, making millions. But he was miserable, he told my colleague Christopher Maag, who reported on Kleisner’s story; he felt that he was “a person who created nothing, gave nothing to anybody.”
Kleisner had worked in finance for 17 years. He had a wife, two children, an apartment near Central Park. But he had come to hate his job, and he was reaching a breaking point.
So when a member of his hiking party blew out her knee atop Mount Rainier, prompting a squad of mountain medics to swoop in and rescue the group, Kleisner began to distance himself from his Wall Street identity.
As the medics escorted them down the mountain, Kleisner found himself intrigued by their ability to perform high-stakes work in a stressful environment, not unlike his own career. Upon returning to the city, he signed up for an emergency medical technician class.
“It was like a protest,” Kleisner said. “I wasn’t serious. But I was sick of Wall Street.”
In fact, it was only the beginning. Kleisner completed the class and started volunteering once a week as an E.M.T. in Central Park. After two years of juggling his cutthroat finance career and his work as a volunteer medic, Kleisner was invited to try out for the Fire Department’s paramedic academy.
Kleisner was 41, almost twice the age of most recruits. But he aced the training, quickly accepting an assignment in the Bronx. Not long after, he quit his job in finance for good, trading in his Wall Street millions for a starting salary of $32,000.
Now, at 55, Kleisner has climbed the ranks to become a rescue medic — part of an elite cohort, the Navy SEALs of the Fire Department’s emergency medical service. Fewer than 60 of the Fire Department’s nearly 4,500 emergency medical responders are rescue medics, responders who are specially trained to save people trapped beneath subway cars or down elevator shafts, or even firefighters trapped in fires, on scene at what Kleisner calls “the biggest jobs in the city.”
Of this group, Kleisner is one of five lead instructors who train other rescue medics to do the job.
Kleisner says people ask him, “Why would you risk your life for $18 an hour?” But in a way, his work as a rescue medic provides the adrenaline and competition that fueled his finance days. Only now, he said, he pours that energy into saving the lives of others, rather than enriching himself.
And he has accrued plenty of stories. Some are memorable. Kleisner saved a man who had a stroke on the observation deck of the Empire State Building and has responded to emergencies in the audience during a Broadway show and inside the Sephora store on 34th Street.
Others are more painful. When Kleisner reported to the scene of a five-alarm fire in the Bronx on Jan. 9, 2022, he had been an emergency medical worker for a decade and had come to believe that he could handle any call that came his way.
He was wrong. Firefighters ran from the 19-story building where the fire burned, laying victims — some unconscious, others dead — on the sidewalk. Many were children. The fire, which killed 17 people and injured 44 others, was the deadliest in New York City in more than 30 years.
Kleisner said his body still has a physical reaction when he recalls the fire: His neck begins to sweat. His heart rate jumps. He feels short of breath, and his fingertips tingle.
The fire, Kleisner says, taught him that he did have a limit to the intensity he could withstand, something it took him two high-stakes, high-speed career paths to realize. Now, when he gets a call about a medical emergency involving a child, he stops to meditate and perform a breathing exercise.
“Jonathan, he will always take lead — every job,” Kleisner’s former partner, Nigel Ramsook, said. But since the high-rise fire, Ramsook said, Kleisner “realized he’s got to take care of himself.”
Kleisner said he goes to therapy, a luxury he knows many paramedics can’t afford because of the meager mental health services the Fire Department provides.
The therapy, though, can only help so much to purge the gory and traumatic rescue scenes from his mind.
Kleisner views his career change, from millionaire to medic, as an escape. But, he says, the trauma that comes with being a rescue medic is “not going anywhere.”
“You have to learn how to live with all of this,” he said. And since discovering this, his goals have changed. The competition, he feels now, is not to win, but to endure.
Weather
Expect sunshine with temperature in the high 70s. For tonight, expect clear skies with temperatures in the low 60s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Sept. 23-Sept. 24 (Rosh Hashana)
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METROPOLITAN diary
Leaving?
Dear Diary:
I was in the city from out of town to help my adult child move out of the fourth-floor walk-up in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, where they had lived for a couple of years.
Lucky me: I found a perfect parking spot right in front of the building, and we started loading boxes and suitcases into my car.
After a while, a guy came out of the Dominican barbershop next door.
“You leaving?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “My kid. They’re moving out. You’ve probably seen them around: tall, red hair, lots of tattoos? They live on the fourth floor here, but they’re moving out of Brooklyn.”
He pointed to his car, which was double-parked nearby.
“No,” he said. “I mean, are you leaving this parking spot?”
— Sarah Prineas
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. James Barron is back tomorrow. T.R.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Francis Mateo and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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Taylor Robinson is a Times reporter covering the New York City metro area.
The post Unhappy on Wall Street, Fulfilled as a Paramedic appeared first on New York Times.
