PORTERSVILLE — For 25 years public service has been a family tradition for the Hinkles.

Betty, Bob, their four children and other family members all have spent time as firefighters, police, emergency medical technicians or soldiers.

“You should have seen us sitting at the dinner table when there was a call. All at once we would be getting up and trying to get dressed and out the door,” Betty said.

It was a celebration on Sunday of the end of one chapter of that service that brought dozens of friends, family and first responders to the Portersville Muddy Creek Emergency Medical Service building.

After a combined 49 years of service as emergency medical technicians, Betty, 68, and Bob, 67, recently decided to retire.

After several weeks of planning, without Betty and Bob knowing, they were thrown a surprise party Sunday afternoon.

“I thought they were mad at me for retiring because they didn’t seem to be talking to us much,” Betty said.

“When we pulled up I saw everyone standing there and it was everybody I know in my life.”

The Portersville ambulance service would likely not be what it is today if not for the help of the Hinkles.

Their son, Chris, started the family trend of service by joining the volunteer fire department in the late 1980s.

Chris and his brother, Todd, would later become two of the founding members of the ambulance service in 1989, while Betty and Bob joined shortly after.

Today Chris is a Black Hawk helicopter pilot in the Army stationed in Japan, and Todd works for the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Department.

Todd’s wife, Ronda, is an EMT with the service, daughter, Terri, is an EMT with both the Harmony and Portersville services and their other son, John, is a military police officer in the Army.

Betty and Bob said that volunteering has always been something they considered important.

“We like to give something back to the community. It wasn’t a hard choice,” Bob said.

Both licensed EMTs, Bob was typically the driver while Betty would tend to the patient, depending on what the call was.

Though she didn’t get started until her children were mostly grown, Betty said she learned some basics about medical care while working for Dr. Fred Vincent in Slippery Rock as a teenager.

“I learned a lot from him,” she said.

It was a small group of dedicated people who were able to get the Portersville service up and running, said founding member Cathy Neiper.

After convincing the state EMS Council that there was a need for ambulance response in the Portersville area, the service was established and headquartered in the same building as the volunteer fire department on Portersville Road in 1989.

In 1996 it moved to a former Agway store across the street, which required extensive remodeling.

“The whole building was covered in an inch of dirt,” Betty said.

Unlike joining the fire department, joining the ambulance service requires a certification that takes four and six months to earn.

“Not anyone can do this. You have to have a love of your community to do this,” Neiper said.

Due to the requirements, it has always been challenging to find enough volunteers to run the service.

“After 9-11 we thought there would be people lined up at the front door, but that wasn’t the case,” Bob said.

Longtime friend Richard Burns said that Betty and Bob made plenty of sacrifices helping others.

“They’re very dedicated.It’s the type of people they are,” he said.

But the work of an EMT is not always glamorous.

“One of our greatest fears is going out on a call and it’s a friend or family member, and we’ve been to plenty of fatalities too,” fellow EMT Dale Schreffler said.

“I’ve seen tears come out of Betty’s eyes after a call,” he said.

Today the department has 25 to 30 volunteer members and five paid paramedics, one of whom is full time.

It responds to an average of 380 emergency calls each year and covers Portersville, Muddy Creek Township, Moraine State Park, McConnells Mill State Park and parts of Perry Township, Slippery Rock Township and Scott Township.

Though Bob still works part-time for the Mars Mineral Corp., the two hope to start a new chapter now that they are retired from the ambulance service.

In August they plan to drive out west with a new camping trailer.