Teen is county's youngest EMT

It's hard to believe Sean Mula of Westlake Village is only 17. He's already accomplished more than others do in a lifetime.

Sean Mula Sean, a senior at Westlake High School, is the youngest emergency medical technician in Ventura County. He runs the junior sailing program at the Westlake Yacht Club and is an accomplished sailor himself. In his spare time, Sean volunteers and works at two local hospitals.

A top student at Westlake, Sean is one of only 28 accepted into the school's prestigious physiology and advanced anatomy course in which students, many of whom are interested in medical careers, dissect cadavers. This year he will serve as president of his school's Future Medical Professionals club.

"Sean has an incredible work ethic, a wonderful attitude and mature disposition," said Nancy Bowman, Westlake High's science department chair and advanced anatomy class teacher. "Sean is an exception. You have to be to do this," said Jeff Cooper, one of Sean's EMT instructors. "This gives you a little snapshot of medicine to see if you like it or not."

Apparently, Sean likes emergency medicine--he underwent the required 120 hours of instruction and lab time, putting people on stretchers and doing blood work. He also spent five hours on an emergency helicopter.

"I am loving every minute of (Emergency Medical Services); the paramedics are so willing to teach and push me to harder and better things," Sean said. "I've always been interested in emergency medicine and figured this was the best way to have contact with patients."

Sean says he actually wanted to be a sailor until Darin Erickson, his science teacher at Westlake, got him interested in medicine.

"He opened us up to the complexity of the human body and the physiology of the body," Sean said.

But sailing remains a passion. Sean comes from a family of sailors that includes a brother who has sailed across the Atlantic, and an uncle, Paul Deeth, who is a professional sailor.

"It's the only sport that involves intelligence and tactics," Sean said. "You use physics to figure out vectors and where you're going to go."

But Sean hated sailing when he first tried it at the age of 8. He stopped for six months, giving it another try after his parents encouraged him. This time he loved it and became involved in the summer sailing camp at the yacht club.

As a member of his school's club sailing team, Sean has raced up and down the West Coast between San Francisco and San Diego. He gives sailing lessons to kids and adults and runs the yacht club's summer sailing camp. "Sailing can be hard and stressful on the body or it can be a leisure sport that you can do your whole life," Sean said. "It involves a lot of upper-body strength, like holding a sit-up for 20 minutes."

When he's not at school or sailing, Sean is either working at the Thousand Oaks Surgical Hospital helping patients and taking vital signs or volunteering at Los Robles Hospital and Medical Center. He's also a volunteer Explorer for American Medical Response on ambulance 441, covering Thousand Oaks, Westlake Village and Sherwood.

"I can do pretty much anything-put patients on cardiac monitors, IVs, defibrillate, give certain medications and perform assessments," Sean said.

A spring break trip to France with his French class had a big impact on Sean. During the trip the students toured World War II sites. Sean now plans to join the United States Army. "There are soldiers out there risking their lives every day for us," he said. "I want to give back."

Sean comes from a family of veterans. His father and grandfather both served in the Army and his British maternal grandfather served in the Royal Air Force in England. Both grandfathers fought in World War II, and his father was in Vietnam.

Unlike many of his peers who are unsure what they want to do with their lives, Sean has big plans and knows exactly what he wants. His immediate plans are to teach CPR and first aid for the American Heart Association while waiting to turn 18 so that he can attend paramedic school.

Then he'd like to attend college and medical school simultaneously in a combined seven-year program, with the goal of opening a medical practice. Among the universities he's interested in are Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth and Stanford. He also plans to do a residency in either trauma or pediatric orthopedic surgery. Sean then intends to join the Army, and later work with Doctors Without Borders, an international medical humanitarian organization. He'd also like to be a professor of surgery.

How does the AP and honors student do it all and still finish his homework? Sean says he gets home at about 6 p.m. but doesn't get to study until about 8:30 p.m. after dinner, walking the dog, and making workand school-related phone calls.

"I'm doing what I love- working at the hospitals and getting a feel for medicine," Sean said.

"This is good training for staying up late when I become an intern."