Marion Resident Frees People From Crunched Cars, Designs Jewelry in Day-Job

Phil High is the owner of in Marion. He spoke with me on his life in jewelry and his work in untangling lives trapped in vehicles. These are his words.

My dad was in the jewelry business. He worked with one of the big corporate stores. I started sitting at the bench — fixing jewelry — in 1970.

My mother and father brought a jewelry store in Lindale Mall in 1976. So I moved here that June and one thing led to another. 

In 1981 I joined the (Marion) Fire Department. I just kind of muscled my way in. You hope you can make a difference in someone’s life.

I’m involved in the art of emergency vehicle extraction, the disentanglement, whatever you want to call it, of people. The Jaws of Life is actually a trademarked term, like Kleenex, which I don’t endorse, they are OK, but.

Extractions are all giant puzzles. Each one is completely different. Part of it goes back to the jewelry manufacturing — you are bending the metal and seeing how the metal reacts, which helps me intuitively see how metal in the cars bend.

We got done the other day and I called the department and I wanted to know how long it took to get this guy it out. It felt like four hours but it was 29 minutes. Fifteen is the magic number for me.

There is an industry term called a golden hour. If you are seriously injured, you need to be in the emergency room within an hour.

I traveled to Europe doing rescue, I traveled around the United States teaching everyone how to use vehicle extraction tools and the techniques, I met some interesting cats.

My wife is a pastor, so I went with my wife to do this mission trip in Nicauragua to this orphanage. I told her it would be really cool if I could go to the fire department and see what is going there. 

My wife said: Absolutely not. You will not run off.

We are in country for about 24 hours and our guide, he said: Hey I have to go to town and buy some water. Phil, do you want to go with me? 

I said: Where are you going to get the water? 

He says: The fire department.  

When I got there the thing that was so amazing to me — I knew it from being all around the world — is that firefighters are all the same. You can scratch "Pedro" off the nametag on their shirt and write whatever — they all act the same talk the same. 

They didn’t have many fires, but they had a lot of accidents and no vehicle extraction tools. I said: How about I find you a set? My buddy had a set in New York, so we shipped them down and I flew down and did my business to teach them the tools.

We were e-mailing the other day and he told me: I bet we have saved ten people’s lives by getting those tools. 

But I don’t like to self-promote. I am like the CIA; I want to be behind the scenes. My wife is the minister, so she stands at the front — I don’t like to be in the front. 

One of the lines that I have always used is that I don’t want to look fast, I want to be fast. You might tell me you can do this and do that, and that’s all really cool, but, do you want to race?