At EMS 50th anniversary gala
The Chief
Thursday, May 22, 2025
BY DUNCAN FREEMAN
On Sept. 15, 2023, Ashley Diaz found herself inside an ambulance.
An FDNY EMT of five years who treated New Yorkers across South Brooklyn and Staten Island, the back of an ambulance wasn’t an unfamiliar place for the young mother. But on this fall day it was Diaz — not one of her patients — receiving treatment for a life-altering injury.
Minutes earlier, Diaz had been retrieving an item from her parked car outside her Staten Island home when a driver crashed into her, pinning her against her vehicle and catastrophically injuring her right leg. Police arrived on the scene before an EMS crew and Diaz helped an officer tourniquet her injured leg, relying on training she had learned years earlier in the EMS academy and then sharpened in her half decade with the FDNY.
“I knew what needed to be done,” Diaz said in an interview last week. “I had some idea the severity of the situation and how much time I had before I bled out.”
When the ambulance arrived, Diaz recognized one of the EMTs who lifted her into the vehicle as the wife of her partner at EMS Station 43 in Coney Island.
“It was surreal being on the other end, being the person who needs the help,” Diaz told The Chief. “It was definitely something that you’re never really prepared for but the training kicks in and it helps.”
Diaz also suffered from a broken pelvis, a broken jaw and an arm fracture. She also lost all her teeth. She was placed in a medically induced coma in which she remained for two weeks. She underwent 12 surgeries, including the amputation of her right leg just above the knee. Diaz spent two months in the hospital.
As she left Staten Island University Hospital with her young son, her colleagues from Station 43 and dozens of other EMS workers lined her path to applaud her. “The entire department did right by me,” Diaz said.
On May 29, Diaz will be honored by her union, Local 2507 of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, during its gala celebrating the 50th anniversary of EMS in New York City. The event will feature doctors, advocates, elected officials and others, but Diaz is the gala’s guest of honor, for which she said she’s thankful and appreciative.
Oren Barzilay, president of Local 2507, which represents uniformed EMTs, paramedics and fire inspectors, said that Diaz’s perseverance and determination are “inspiring” to the men and women of FDNY EMS.
“Although they are disabled it doesn’t stop them from fulfilling their dreams,” the union leader said. “It fills us knowing that we make a difference in other people’s lives and she’s a reflection of that.”
‘Survived for my son’
The driver of the vehicle that hit Diaz, Nicole Marino, was operating her car without a license and was impaired by fentanyl at the time she hit the EMT, prosecutors said in court a month after the incident. Police found fentanyl in her purse and Marino pleaded guilty to second-degree assault. She was sentenced to five years in prison and five years of supervised release in June 2023.
About a year after her injury, Diaz returned to work in the FDNY’s Resource Coordination Center that, though she’s not working in the field, allows her to keep her title as EMT and see her former coworkers often. She said her recovery is a credit to the support she received from the FDNY’s family assistance unit, whose staff drove her to appointments and got her a special van.
“It’s amazing what they do,” she said. “Everyone has just been tremendously helpful, tremendously supportive”
Amanda Farinacci, a spokesperson for the FDNY, said the department’s family assistance team has had the “privilege and honor” to be there for Diaz and her family.
“We remain in awe of her resiliency, courage and determination in recovery,” Farinacci said in a statement. “She has taken an awful tragedy and ensured it will not deter her from forging her path of success, and we are happy to help her in this endeavor.”
The most important factor in her recovery, Diaz said, was the support and love of her son, now 7 years old, who motivated the EMT to fight through her incident and recover. Diaz found out she was pregnant with her only child several months into the FDNY EMS academy and finished her training while pregnant.
Diaz worked on light duty in the months immediately preceding and following the birth of her son, and he was there waiting for her at home at the end of her shifts, reminding her why she was saving lives. Diaz said that her son aspires to be a firefighter like his uncle — Diaz’s brother Kevin Diaz based in Brooklyn’s Ladder 157 — or like the father of her son, a sanitation worker with the city’s Department of Sanitation.
“I survived for my son,” Diaz said. “Without him I honestly don’t know if I would be doing as well as I’ve been.”
Now two years since the incident that took her leg, Diaz says she’s happy in her new position at the FDNY and plans to stay there for a while. Despite some setbacks — she had to have a 13th, and hopefully final, surgery in May — Diaz is still hopeful that she can one day achieve her dream of becoming a nurse.
“If I was supposed to die, I would have died that day,” Diaz insisted. “I was obviously spared for a reason and that reason wasn’t to sit at home and be depressed, be sad and sulk and act like I died anyway.”