Just about every day on Whidbey Island, people place their trust — and in many cases their lives — in the hands of paramedics and other emergency medical personnel.

And for good reason. First responders, emergency medical technicians, intermediate life support personnel and paramedics are trained professionals who save lives as a profession. Their jobs are to be heroes.

But when paramedics break the law, there don’t seem to be any clear-cut rules about how this affects their job, how it is reported or what the consequences are. It’s an issue that the state Legislature and the Department of Health has focused on over the last year, including a new program to track healthcare providers with recent felony convictions.

Based on an inquiry from the Whidbey News-Times, the state Department of Health began investigations last week into two Whidbey General Hospital paramedics with criminal records.

Janet Kastl, the director of the Department of Health’s Office of Emergency Medical Services and Trauma System, said the department wasn’t aware that either man had ever been convicted of a crime, even though they should have self-reported on their re-certification application.

In Island County Superior Court, Tracy Adams, a 38-year-old Bellingham resident, pleaded not guilty last month to charges of stalking, two counts of residential burglary and 11 counts of computer trespass in the first degree.

His attorney, Charles Arndt of Coupeville, said Adams was falsely accused.

Adams also has a previous criminal history, according to a report by Detective Ed Wallace with the Island County Sheriff’s Office. While Adams was in the Marine Corps in 1989, he was charged and found guilty of stealing an ATM card and $3,150, which are felony-level crimes in the state of Washington, Wallace wrote.

Arndt said Adams may have been under the assumption that his criminal record had been sealed. Arndt pointed out that, under state law, a person can ask a judge to vacate all but the most serious felony convictions from his or her record after a certain number of years. Once vacated, a person doesn’t have to record the conviction on job applications — though it appears Adams’ record wasn’t vacated.

Also, Arndt said an old theft charge probably shouldn’t matter to the Department of Health.

“If my child is bleeding,” he said, “and the best person to help the child is someone who misused a credit card 20 years ago, I would rather have him treat my child.”

Another paramedic, a 48-year-old Oak Harbor man, also has a criminal history. The News-Times isn’t publishing his name in order to protect the identities of his victims.

The paramedic pleaded guilty last year to two counts of fourth-degree assault, domestic violence. His victims were his wife and a teenaged son. He received a one-year deferred sentence and a year of probation. He was ordered to attend a domestic-violence impact panel, obtain an alcohol and drug evaluation and complete treatment.

The man was on duty as a paramedic while there was a warrant out for his arrest, according to a law enforcement official.

In 2001, the same paramedic was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence, but later pleaded guilty to negligent driving in the first degree, the definition of which states that he “did exhibit the effects of having consumed alcohol.” The court commissioner gave him a 90-day suspended sentence, a year of probation and ordered him to obtain an alcohol evaluation, follow any treatment plan, attend a DUI victim impact panel, and go to alcohol and drug information school.

The same year, he was cited for driving with a suspended license, but the charge was later amended to driving without a valid license. He refused a breathalyzer test at the scene, according to court documents.

In regard to Adams, Whidbey General Hospital has allowed him to continue working even after he was charged with the felonies. If convicted of all the charges against him, Adams could face up to seven years in prison under the standard sentencing range.

His attorney, Arndt, said Adams has an outstanding performance record at the hospital.

“If he wasn’t valuable to them,” he said, “I think they would have found every reason to get rid of him.”

Hospital spokesperson Trish Rose pointed out that Adams hasn’t been convicted of the crimes, which he has adamantly denied committing. She said the allegations against Adams aren’t anything that would affect patient safety.

Adams is accused of burglarizing his ex-financee’s home and using hospital computers to trespass into her online accounts.

Rose said the hospital wasn’t aware of Adams’ conviction in the Marine Corps. She said the hospital performs background checks on employees, but only checks criminal records within the state.

The hospital’s employment application asks if an applicant was convicted of a felony in the last 10 years. In Adams’ case, he was convicted more than 10 years ago.

Rose said the hospital has paperwork which shows Adams received an honorable discharge from the Marine Corps and went on to serve honorably in the Army.

According to Wallace’s report, Adams applied for a job at the Seattle Police Department last year.

He didn’t disclose his court-martial offense in his application, Wallace wrote, and lied about it during a polygraph test.

When confronted with the oversight, Adams told the Seattle police investigator that his attorney in the Marine Corps told him his record had been sealed, so he didn’t think he had to disclose it.

Adams didn’t get the job.

Wallace wrote that he found a file on Adams’ computer which explains how to beat a polygraph test. The file was dated five days before his polygraph test with the Seattle Police.

Kastl of the Department of Health said paramedics and other emergency medical personnel are asked if they have ever violated the law when they apply for certification or re-certification, which occurs every three years. She said neither Adams nor the other paramedic noted any criminal convictions in their most recent re-certification.

The role of Kastl’s office, according to its mission statement, is to establish, monitor and enforce qualifications for licensing, consistent standards of practice, continuing competency mechanisms and discipline of emergency medical services and trauma personnel.

Kastl said the Department of Health performs background checks on applicants, but currently the check is only through state records.

“A previous criminal background is the hardest to track down, especially if it’s out of state,” she said.

The Department of Health does a better job of keeping track of criminal acts committed by current emergency medical personnel, Kastl said. Under a new cross-referencing system, the State Patrol reports certain felony convictions to the health department each quarter. The information is compared to the agency’s database.

The department announced that week that it identified more than 30 licensed healthcare providers in the state with recent felony convictions.

But Kastl said there is not regular system for reporting healthcare providers who have been charged (but not yet convicted) of a crime — which she agrees the department should be aware of — but that they usually find out through hospitals, individual complaints or news reports. Recently, the department suspended the license of a Snohomish County EMT accused of sexual contact with a child.

“There are many, many ways that we find out things,” she said, “but there are no perfect ways.”

Kastl stressed that breaking the law doesn’t automatically mean that an EMT or paramedic will lose his or her certification. She said the department looks at each case individually to assess the seriousness of the crime, how long ago it occurred and the outcome.

In most cases, the emergency medical personnel receive a “lesser action,” Kastl said, which could be probation, additional training or working with a mentor.

“We’re looking for something that might have an impact on their ability to provide safe care…” she said. “If it involves sexual misconduct, we are much more likely to yank certification.”

You can reach News-Times reporter Jessie Stensland at jstensland@whidbeynewstimes.com or call 675-6611.