"When someone calls 911, they want an immediate response. That's why they're calling 911. We try to live up to that expectation as reasonably as we can," says Kerry Clear, a paramedic with Albuquerque Ambulance for seven years.

Paramedics and firefighters try to remember that the patient is someone's mother, father, sister, brother, aunt, uncle or cousin, says Clear, 38.

We "never see the person the way they would like to be seen," he says. "Most people expect us to bring a little sanity into chaos."

His own sanity comes from his daughter, 6, and son, 4. The single father has a good relationship with his ex-wife. They are raising the children together.

Three weeks after his daughter was born, he started taking classes to become a paramedic.

Recertification is required every two years because emergency medicine changes quickly. Updates on procedures and protocol come about three or four times a year.

He keeps up. He wants to.

But Clear also likes to push the line - wherever it is.

He says he did that from the time he was a kid, one of few who can say he was adopted twice: once at age 3 by an uncle and then by the Clears when he and his twin brother were 12.

He quit Manzano High School to join the Army, serving four years in an airborne unit. He loved that experience, he says, learning more about himself then at any other time in his life.

After he came home to Albuquerque, he couldn't seem to find his niche.

He has been a bouncer, announcer, bar manager, security guard and apartment manager. He worked for a lumber company, unloading trucks for Wal-Mart, painting new construction. He was in loss prevention at Dillard's.

He also finished his high school education, later plunging into emergency medicine at Presbyterian Hospital for two years before completing paramedic classes.

He is career-driven, taking the element of peril as a paramedic as part of it.

Even though he stands 6-feet-6-inches tall, he says: "I've been attacked. I've been head-butted in the face. I've had weapons pulled on me."

That isn't what he talks about when you ask him about his job.

"One of the few joys I have in my profession is I get to meet some really cool kids."

He takes the Albuquerque Ambulance rig and gear to schools from preschool to high school.

"I like seeing the faces light up when the Fire Department brings their truck out. We do it to show them there isn't anything to be afraid of. To kids, we're all giants."

When he arrives at the scene of a wreck or at your door, it isn't his size you notice.

It's his skill and his caring that make him a giant.