Faith and serving his community have been the twin driving forces in Vince Rhoades’s life.
Rhoades, the volunteer emergency chaplain of the Ontario Police Department, Ontario Fire & Rescue and the Malheur County Sheriff’s Office, has been on the front lines for nearly five years in the county, helping people cope with tragedy, trauma and loss.
Fire & Rescue Chief Clint Benson said Rhoades, an Army veteran and former firefighter, helped a couple in Ontario who lost their dogs in a recreational vehicle fire on Nov. 18.
Rhoades, according to Benson, arranged for the cremation of the dogs and returned the ashes of the animals to the fire victims so they could have some “closure.”
Benson said Rhoades, a Catholic deacon, is often called in to help people during “very difficult” situations. His work is primarily done in the background, Benson said.
“His selfless service to our community often goes unnoticed due to the nature of the work he does,” Benson said,
Working under the radar is okay with Rhoades.
“Behind the scenes” is how a chaplain operates, Rhoades said.
“It’s what I call stage right or stage left,” Rhoades said. “We don’t get in the center of the stage.”
Among his duties: providing rites of the dead; serving death notifications; counseling grief-stricken families who have lost someone from a fire, homicide or suicide; and providing peer support to law enforcement and fire crews who face trauma from dealing with crimes or catastrophes.
Endorsed through the Blessed Sacrament Church in Ontario, where he attends church, Rhoades is at the altar every other weekend as an acolyte. Rhoades said an acolyte helps with prayers, communion and other parts of the church services.
As a chaplain, Rhoades performs weddings, funerals, prayer invocations and hospital visits should families request him, according to his job description from Ontario Fire & Rescue.
In that role, Rhoades said, he doesn’t promote his Catholic faith to members of the fire, police department, sheriff’s office or the community.
He works under the supervision of an incident commander at emergency scenes and only when the person in charge of the scene requests his presence, he said.
Rhoades spent more than 30 years as a firefighter for the Department of Defense at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Tacoma, Washington. As he was retiring in 2012, he was asked to stay on at the base as a civilian services emergency chaplain. For about a decade, he was a chaplain with the Tacoma-Pierce County Chaplaincy, a nonprofit that helps to mitigate trauma for first responders and the community.
Rhoades, 67, moved to Ontario about five years ago to help care for his in-laws. After a routine fire inspection in his neighborhood, Rhoades said he met Terry Leighton, former Ontario fire chief. Rhoades, who said he does not believe anything happens by chance, gave Leighton his card, and soon after that Rhoades was chaplain for three first responder agencies in Malheur County.
“It’s a real privilege to serve the firefighters, the police and their families, but especially the citizens,” he said.
After a traumatic event, Rhoades said, the chaplaincy is a “warm handoff” from the fire or law enforcement office for a family suffering from a loss.
Rhoades said it’s his job to help the family navigate the aftermath of a tumultuous event.
Rhoades said he is not a therapist or a licensed counselor, but at the request of a family or loved one, it’s his job to refer them to the appropriate mental health professional or help make funeral arrangements.
“We don’t sell them anything,” he said. “We ask a lot of questions and try to accommodate the victims of these traumatic incidents.”
He said the people who lost the seven dogs in the RV fire called him and they spoke for more than an hour. The next day, with the “blessing and permission” of the couple, he picked up the remains of the dogs to have them cremated at no cost to the family.
This, Rhoades said, took much of the “post-trauma” off of the family.
Shortly before he retired as a firefighter, Rhoades went through the Franciscan Order, a centuries-old secular program through the Catholic Church that dedicates itself to serving others.
During that time, Rhoades did prison ministry work and hospice work. He also worked with inmates at Snake River Correctional Institution in Ontario for about three years, which he called a “challenging” but “humbling” experience.
Rhoades said his spiritual life gets him through some of the most challenging scenes he has been on throughout his career as both a firefighter and a chaplain.
He said he continues to participate in first responder training including de-escalation training, which taps listening skills, body language and other techniques to defuse emotionally charged incidents.
“It’s like building muscle memory at a firing range,” he said.
He said he also has a good prayer and meditation practice and stays active at his church.
After every incident there is a confidential “debrief” where the first responders frankly discuss what happened and the potential signs of trauma to look for. This kind of discipline, Rhoades said, is what helps him “get through the day.”
Rhoades said it’s “not about him” when he arrives on the scene of a catastrophic event.
“I’m responsible, spiritually and emotionally, for the health and safety of firefighters, police and EMS,” he said. “And then for that bereavement, that loss our citizens are suffering.”
News tip? Send your information to Steven Mitchell at [email protected].
WE CAN’T DO THIS FOR FREE – The Malheur Enterprise delivers quality local journalism – fair and accurate. We depend on support through subscriptions to deliver our reports. You can read it any hour, any day with a digital subscription. Read it on your phone, your Tablet, your home computer. Click subscribe – $7.50 a month.