Jake Blackwelder is a Flight Paramedic with Classic Air Medical.  Jake’s path to becoming a flight medic started during his military service as a paratrooper specializing in communications and combat medicine.  Serving primarily in the ‘90s, Jake saw two combat tours in places such as Somalia and The Balkans War in Bosnia.  During his time in service, Jake got a crash course in Leadership and the immense responsibility that comes with being a servant to his subordinate soldiers.

After the Army, Jake earned a BS in Experiential Education at the University of Utah using his GI Bill to pay for college.  Missing the camaraderie military life provides, he spent time in the Reserves at Fort Douglas training other US Army Reserve units to deploy to places like Kosovo and Iraq.  A recurring theme surfaced in his experiences training others: the importance of service Leaders must readily give to their subordinates. 

Finishing academics at the U and retiring from the Army, Jake moved on to Wilderness Therapy—taking Youth-at-Risk into the backcountry of Utah to help instill basic life lessons such as consequences and being accountable for one’s actions.  Jake found ways to use the sometimes harshness of the wilderness to help teach these crucial lessons and to reveal character buried deep within anger, depression and addiction.  Again camaraderie and Leadership being recurring themes in this work.

After years working in the field setting, Jake moved into the administrative side of wilderness therapy to gain a better understanding of Leadership when viewed from the wider angle of program policy and support, logistics, and evacuation decisions.

After nearly 10 years of working in Wilderness Therapy, Jake’s passion for austere prehospital medicine resurfaced and he pursued the resurgence by taking a Wilderness EMT course taught by the National Outdoor Leadership School’s Wilderness Medicine Institute (NOLS WMI).  Learning to be an EMT and treating both minor and serious injuries in remote settings and in all weather conditions was both physically and academically challenging.  NOLS WMI brought the juxtaposition of problem solving and the “get it done, no matter what” of combat medicine, the complex medical problems seen in the urban setting and paired it with the challenges of leadership all in the unforgiving setting of remote environs.

Working in Moab, UT with Grand County EMS (GCEMS), Grand County Search and Rescue (GCSAR), and falling back on his military and youth leadership experiences, Jake started teaching for NOLS WMI and has instructed nearly 5,000 students over 6 years.  He has taught courses such as Wilderness EMT (WEMT), Wilderness First Responder (WFR), Wilderness First Aid (WFA), and has taught urban physicians, nurses, and paramedics crossover courses to prepare them to use their advanced medical knowledge in austere settings.

Hungry for more knowledge and endeavoring for new ways to serve his community and his passions, Jake became a paramedic and then a flight paramedic where he now cares for some of the sickest and worst injured patients in the realm of prehospital and transport medicine. 

When he is not searching, rescuing, flying or teaching, Jake is at home with his wife, Megan and being a father to two great kids, Olivia and Henry.

For fun and to unwind from the business of saving lives and teaching others how to stay safe, Jake is an avid fly fisherman and canyoneer.