Dan Geraghty was a Baltimore City firefighter for 23 years. As an emergency vehicle driver who worked mainly in East Baltimore, near The Johns Hopkins Hospital, he was often seen with the ambulance crew dropping off patients in need of critical care at the hospital.

“I drove the ladder truck,” he says. “Usually, our job was to put ladders up, do search and rescue and provide access. Sometimes we would arrive at a fire and the people outside would tell us there are people still inside. It was our job to go in and find them.

After retiring from firefighting in 2010, Geraghty spent a year at home “waiting for the grass to grow” and decided to explore other opportunities. When he saw a job description for a Johns Hopkins’ Lifeline position, he realized it would be a good fit.

Now in his seventh year as a communications specialist for Lifeline, Geraghty’s primary role is coordinating with bed management and admitting to transfer outside patients. “We arrange the transportation, triage the call to find out what level of care they need, and send out an ambulance to pick the patient up and bring them back to one of the hospitals in the Johns Hopkins Health System,” he says. “A lot of times we’ll call the sending facility and say, ‘Hey, we’ll be there in an hour to bring that patient into Hopkins,’ and the patient is relieved because they require specialized care at our hospitals.”

He says most people would be surprised to learn how many patients are waiting for a bed at Johns Hopkins every day. “All the calls, we’re handling—sending crews out to different places—and we’re handling the emergency paging for the hospital, as well as the discharges,” he says. “It’s very busy, and not much downtime.”

In his free time, Geraghty bicycles to relieve stress, an activity he’s enjoyed for many years. He even took off work for 50 days to ride from Los Angeles to Boston, a challenge his colleagues put him up to. “Some people can go swimming or take yoga,” he says. “I get out on the bike, and that’s my relaxation. I found an activity that worked for me, so I’m sticking with it.”