Lauren Webster, University of Virginia student and volunteer paramedic, dies at 25
By Emily Langer, Published: May 18 | Updated: Saturday, May 19, 10:07 PMThe Washington Post
Lauren Webster joined the Sterling Volunteer Rescue Squad at 18, and even after entering the University of Virginia, she returned every Friday to pull a 12-hour night shift as a paramedic with the group.
“She lived for that,” said Michael W. Tompkins, an Alexandria lawyer who volunteers with the Friday crew.
Tompkins recalled Lauren’s doggedness in advocating for her patients. Once, she and Tompkins responded to a call from an elderly woman who was bleeding profusely after a fall. Lauren convinced the on-call doctor that the woman required a diversion to Inova Fairfax Hospital’s trauma unit.
“Here is someone” in her early 20s, Tompkins said, “and she was explaining to a doctor why she disagreed with him.”
Lauren, 25, a Phi Beta Kappa student, was scheduled to graduate with honors today from the University of Virginia and start a job in two weeks at a National Institutes of Health genetics laboratory. Her new apartment in Bethesda was ready. Boxes of freshly ordered furnishings continue to arrive by mail at her mother’s home in Arlington County.
But Lauren suffered from depression, and it became increasingly severe in the past six months. She was found dead May 15 at a Fairfield Inn in Laurel. She had stopped responding to e-mails on Mother’s Day. Sharon Webster said that her daughter died of an apparent prescription drug overdose. The case remains under investigation by Maryland’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
Lauren had completed her paramedic training at Northern Virginia Community College. When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005, she went to Biloxi, Miss., to do relief work, first with AmeriCorps and later through Habitat for Humanity. During Mardi Gras in New Orleans, she saw a man drop to the ground and yell, “Help me!” When no one else responded, Lauren began administering CPR.
“I couldn’t let him die in front of me,” she told her mother.
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