(Butler, PA) Thirty-three-year-old Crawford County resident Joseph V. Geiser stayed in his midsized sedan – and more recently, in his roomier ambulance – while pursuing for three years an associate degree in Butler County Community College’s registered nursing program.
Geiser rents a home near Meadville, where he works weekend nights as an emergency room technician at Meadville Medical Center.
He bought the 21-year-old decommissioned ambulance in August from an Erie County volunteer fire company.
Geiser said his selection was never intended to signal his vocation but to replace the 2011 Subaru Legacy in which he lived three nights a week while attending his first two academic years at BC3.
“I live an hour and a half away,” Geiser said. “So instead of driving back and forth, especially in the winter, I wanted to stay down here.”
Geiser needed a location in which to park the highly recognizable vehicle at night.
BC3 maintenance employee Jay Motko lives in Butler Township about a mile from the college’s main campus.
“He needed a place to park, to stay overnight,” Motko said. “I told him a couple of the other guys in maintenance had made me aware of his situation, and I told him, ‘Hey, you are welcomed at my place anytime. I have plenty of space, plenty of parking, plenty of room for you. Come and go as you need to.’”
“It was awfully cramped trying to sleep in the Subaru.”
Geiser is a 2008 graduate of Maplewood Area Junior-Senior High School in Guys Mills, Crawford County. He earned an associate degree in collision repair technology in 2010 from Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology in Lancaster.
He decided to pursue a career in health care as a result of the care he received after a 2011 motorcycle crash in Meadville. Geiser suffered head injuries that necessitated his transport by medical helicopter to a facility in Erie, where he hospitalized for several months.
Geiser began to work as an emergency medical technician with Meadville Area Ambulance Service in 2015. He purchased the ambulance from Mill Village Volunteer Fire Company in Waterford, Erie County.
“It was awfully cramped trying to sleep in the Subaru,” Geiser said. “In the ambulance I have a twin-sized bed that I attached to the floor.”
Geiser studied subjects such as nursing care for patients with complex health problems, pharmacology for nurses and general microbiology on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at BC3’s Heaton Family Learning Commons until the academic and community library would close.
He’d walk to the nearby BC3 Field House to shower, then to a classroom building to resume his studies until 9:30 p.m.
Geiser would later travel to a convenience store, order a steak or pork quesadilla and a large soda, have his meal in the parking lot as he listened to the radio, then drive to Motko’s property.
He’d step inside the approximately 50-square-foot ambulance compartment, where he kept a duffel bag with “on average, probably six” changes of clothing – “Scrubs. A couple pairs of jeans. Couple pairs of shorts if the weather was going to be nice” – and fall atop the twin-sized bed he secured to the floor with zip ties.
Geiser would use the light from his cell phone to illuminate the pages he read from his textbooks.
“He had to make sure he had his laptop charged and his cell phone charged."
"You don’t just wake up in the morning and automatically have everything that you need. You have to think through it all."
... "He really wanted to come here.”
“He had to make sure he had his laptop charged and his cell phone charged,” said friend Liz Mackey, who with Sara Layton and Abigail Montgomery attended clinical training with Geiser as students in BC3’s Nursing, R.N., program.
“He had to have everything ready so he could study online and do his assignments online in the ambulance.”
Said Montgomery: “You don’t just wake up in the morning and automatically have everything that you need. You have to think through it all.”
Geiser “respected the program so much that he was willing to live like that for a few days a week because there are (nursing) programs that are a little closer to him,” said Heather Darrington, a faculty member in BC3’s Shaffer School of Nursing and Allied Health.
“But he really wanted to come here.”
“The most committed to the program of all of us there."
“I definitely applaud him. He was more than polite. I am very happy that he has been able to reach his goal so far.”
Geiser was named to BC3’s president’s list – a recognition for those who attain a grade-point average of 3.75 or higher while earning at least 12 credit hours in a semester – and, in taking required prerequisite courses, completed the college’s two-year registered nursing career program in three years.
He was among the record 74 graduates who earned an associate in applied science degree in Nursing, R.N., from BC3 in 2023.
“The most committed to the program of all of us there,” Layton said.
Geiser drove his ambulance away from Motko’s property on Bean Street for the last time as a student in May.
Geiser began the highest-paying job he has had – as a general nurse at Meadville Medical Center – on June 5, exactly three weeks after graduating in BC3’s Class of 2023.
“It will be more than double what I was making as a tech,” Geiser said. “It really hasn’t sunk in yet.”
“I definitely applaud him,” Motko said. “I’d call him occasionally or text him occasionally to see if he needed anything. He was more than polite. I am very happy that he has been able to reach his goal so far. It’s definitely a wonderful thing for him.”
