By Christine Dempsey
Journal Inquirer
WILLIMANTIC, Conn. — At 73, Carmen Villafana has both mental and physical pain. She is addicted to crack cocaine and alcohol and often says she wants to die — which she almost did during a recent overdose.
But there’s a bright spot in her life in Gerald “Jay” Sisco, who has been helping her since he started working as a social worker last month. Sisco, whom Villafana alternately calls an angel and “The Fireman,” is believed to be the only social worker employed by a fire department in the state of Connecticut.
While some police departments have social workers, including Willimantic’s, no social workers are known to be embedded in a fire department.
“I haven’t heard of any other fire department doing that,” said Alan Zygmunt, public information officer for the Connecticut Fire Academy. He said it’s a good idea because it gives firefighters one person to go to when they come across someone who needs ongoing support beyond the emergency at hand.
“I think that it would give the fire departments a point of contact,” he said.
Marc Scrivener, who retired from his fire chief job last week, got the idea to have a social worker when he noticed that many 911 calls come from the same people, often with problems that could have been resolved before they reached the level of an emergency.
Like most fire agencies, the Willimantic Fire Department, which has a paid staff, does more than put out fires. Firefighters also are EMTs and drive ambulances. In fact, 78 percent of their 5,250 calls last year were medical in nature, and almost half of those involved someone over 65, Scrivener said.
Young or old, some people are alone, like Villafana, and need help.
“Sometimes, people call 911 because they don’t have anyone else to call,” Scrivener said.
Enter the firefighters, whether it is to pick up someone during a “lift assist” or respond to a home during an emergency and find it is not safe due to unsanitary conditions, a lack of heat or other problem.
“We want those folks to get care prior to calling 911,” Scrivener said.
In the past, firefighters would tell the chief about people who needed more help, and he would contact the proper agency. But when Scrivener does that, he said, he’s giving out information that is second-hand, and there’s a delay in connecting the person with services. He figured it would be better to streamline the referral process and “take the middleman right out” by having a social worker embedded in the fire department, talking directly to those in need, he said.
Sometimes, Sisco responds to calls.
It’s something he’s used to. The 55-year-old plans to retire from his job as a district chief for the Hartford Fire Department later this year. (He’s been juggling both jobs with relative ease since he generally works one weekly 24-hour shift.)
Sisco said Scrivener’s “vision makes sense to me.”
During his 26 years in the fire service, it bothered Sisco — who also is an EMT — that he never knew what happened to the people who suffered medical problems or were burned out of their homes once the emergency was over.
“As a fireman, we go to the immediate need,” Sisco said, but rarely are able to follow up.
So he got a degree from Springfield College with the goal of someday becoming a licensed master social worker. Sisco, a Hartford native who speaks Spanish, had started thinking about retirement when he spotted an ad for the job in Willimantic, which has a large Puerto Rican community.
He started on Jan. 13 . His $62,400 annual salary comes from a two-year, $1.2 million grant from the American Rescue Plan Act.
One of his first assignments was to find someone to help a diabetic and frequent 911 caller manage his blood sugar, Scrivener said.
Sisco said he also helped find temporary housing for two women and their children who were displaced from their apartments because of a Feb. 3 fire. Usually, someone from the fire department would work on that, but he was able to get a head-start while firefighters were still putting out the blaze.
“It was significant loss, but the emotional toll is even greater,” Sisco said. “There is a lot of anxiety. Shock ... that their stuff was burned.”
He referred the mothers to Windham Area Interfaith Ministries for used furniture and clothing.
“The community came together,” Sisco said. “There’s so many resources in Willimantic, I don’t think people are aware of it.”
Another person Sisco is working to help is a man who has been living in an apartment under poor conditions that included the presence of animal feces and a lack of heat and electricity. The man had stopped paying his rent, he said.
Firefighters said there are many more who could use ongoing help from a social worker in Willimantic , which is a taxing district within the town of Windham.
“We’re sending him plenty of referrals,” Interim Capt. Ron Mott said at fire headquarters Tuesday.
“Definitely needed,” added Interim Lt. David Stevens.
State fire officials said they, too, like the concept of a fire department social worker.
“I think it’s a really exciting initiative coming out of Willimantic,” said State Fire Marshal Lauri Volkert. “I think it’s a great system, because the fire department is so well-placed to discover the needs of communities.”
Michael Thurz, past president of the Connecticut Fire Chiefs Association and chief in Glastonbury, said he never heard of a social worker embedded in a fire department until he heard about Willimantic.
“That’s the first time I’ve seen it,” Thurz said. “I think it’s ingenious that he did that,” he said of Scrivener, who, like Thurz, is a past president of the fire chiefs group.
“It’s a creative way to think outside of the box to help your community,” Thurz said.
‘No one ... ever asked’
So far, Sisco feels he’s been able to help Carmen Villafana the most.
He met her his first day on the job. He was in an ambulance with her, headed to Windham Hospital after she overdosed. She had taken crack cocaine, “her drug of choice,” Sisco said, with another drug he suspects she got from a man who had been staying in her apartment. The man has since left, he said.
Sisco said he told her, “Let me know what I can do for you.”
She answered that no one ever asked her that before, he said.
When he followed up and visited her at her Willimantic Housing Authority apartment, it was a mess and she didn’t have any food, Sisco said. He went out, bought her a Subway sandwich and went to the soup kitchen, where he got more food for her.
He also arranged to have meals delivered to her home and helped line up a caregiver to make home visits, Sisco said. He’s still working to get her a bed in a facility to treat her substance abuse.
Things seemed better when he stopped by one day after that and found her in a much neater apartment, Sisco said. She had done laundry and was cooking.
“That made me feel great, it really did,” he said. “It reassured me that we’re going in the right direction.”
She still has a way to go. The road to recovery lies ahead.
Sisco is no stranger to adversity. In 1996, he resigned from his police officer position in Granby after his arrest on charges of third-degree larceny and tampering with a witness following incidents involving his ex-girlfriend, according to the Hartford Courant. A court employee said Thursday that there is no record of a conviction; Sisco said the charges were dropped.
Sisco, who is biracial, said the arrest by his own department was part of an ongoing pattern of what he alleged to be discrimination. He filed a complaint with the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities but agreed to drop it when he left the department, he said.
He’s not bitter. The experience “made me a better person,” Sisco said.
“Gerald’s got some life experience,” Scrivener said, “and clearly it’s turned him into the man that he is today.”
And that’s the man who is helping people in Willimantic, and giving them hope, he said.
People like Villafana.
‘Like an angel’
Tuesday, Feb. 11, was a good day for Villafana, but not perfect. Sisco visited, a highlight. But she went from making jokes to saying she wanted to die.
“I just pray each day for the Lord to take me,” she said. She shifted on the couch as she talked, saying she has pain from serious back problems.
When she talked about Sisco, though, she cried tears of joy.
“He makes me feel like somebody,” she said. “He’s like an angel. He knocks on my door one day. I don’t know where he came from,” she said, wiping her tears with a napkin.
“He’s an angel from up above.”
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