After a decorated 19 year career in EMS, I was accused of excessive use of force (while responding as a paramedic on a call with a combative party) which led to me being charged with misdemeanor assault, the loss of my paramedic license, and the inability to work as a first responder while waiting for the trial to commence. This incident occurred almost 2 years ago. Due to Covid and several health complications, I’m still awaiting my trial. 

We are so grateful that another organization stepped in to help with emergency needs after my initial loss of income, as well as, raise some funds to put towards legal fees. To date, the funds raised for that campaign have gone towards legal fees. The link is listed below if you’d like to read more about that. 

https://pipehitterfoundation.org/who-we-support/keith-hogan/

During this 22 month career hold, I found work to try and pay the bills but the deficit is far too great but the problem was compounded by several urgent medical procedures to place stents into my pancreas. This led to me becoming septic after bacteria infected my knee joint, which required 5 major surgeries to recover. I am also a type 1 diabetic which further complicated this entire process. After having a total knee replacement revision, I am required to take antibiotics indefinitely to avoid a reoccurrence of the infection. But the pancreatic abnormality remains a persistent issue. 

The process of having a stent placed in the pancreas has caused several bouts of pancreatitis. Over the last 8 months, I have had 4 procedures to have stents placed/replaced in my pancreas with many weeks of being ill and, at times, in a severe amount of pain. This situation had left me unable to work at all for many more weeks at a time and ultimately, unable to support my family.

I’m happy to report I have returned to work (still not as a first responder) but the damage has been done. The above mentioned fundraiser (link provided above) was able to raise money to put towards legal costs, but we still owe approximately $35k+ in legal fees. With the trial finally coming up, that number will continue to increase and we can’t keep up. 

Due to the amount of work I’ve had to miss, we are months behind on just about every bill we have (e.g. rent, utilities, car payments, etc.) We don’t have credit cards, and we have dissolved every asset/savings/retirement account(s) we had.

So I am humbly reaching out to this community to request assistance. Anything to put towards legal fees, bills, or even to be able to buy enough groceries to last a couple of weeks at a time would be a huge help.

I know times are tough on everyone right now and there are so many others that have significantly worse circumstances. My family and I are grateful just to have this platform to ask for assistance. 

Thank you for your time and stay safe out there.