Gary Gaulden tries to convince you that nothing spectacular has happened in his 45 years of work as a Medical Technologist at UT Southwestern, first at St. Paul Medical Center and now at William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital. But don’t let his humility fool you – his actions once saved a hospital visitor’s life.

St. Paul, the facility later replaced by Clements University Hospital, became the setting for the drama that Mr. Gaulden describes as “the most satisfying thing that ever happened to me.”

He and a lab co-worker were having lunch in the former hospital’s cafeteria when they noticed an elderly woman choking nearby. “She reminded me of my mother,” Mr. Gaulden says. As she kept coughing and struggled to breathe, it became obvious she was in danger. “You could tell that whatever it was she was choking on was getting farther down in her throat, restricting her airways,” he says.

Although Mr. Gaulden wasn’t a doctor, he had volunteered as an adult leader for his son’s Boy Scout troop, so he knew how to perform the Heimlich maneuver. “I hadn’t used it before then, and I haven’t used it since,” he says, but he sprang into action, and it worked. “The instant relief that was on her face was priceless.”

The woman thanked him, even though to this day he does not know her name. “After she got clear of what she had in her throat, she went back to eating – and so did we,” he says.

That moment, still frozen in his memory, has stayed with him through the years, along with his dedication to medical service. “Seeing your kids graduate high school and college – that’s one level of satisfaction,” he says. “But helping another human being is just a different level.”

Mr. Gaulden has spent his entire career at UT Southwestern. He says he took the job because it was in his field and he liked the people he worked with in the lab.

He started part time at St. Paul on Feb. 14, 1976, testing enzyme levels in patients’ blood while finishing his medical technology training there. After graduating that July with a Bachelor of Science from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, Mr. Gaulden joined St. Paul’s hematology lab full time.

Mr. Gaulden, who likes to garden, hunt, fish, and carve small wooden animals – dogs, cats, even ducks and pelicans – to give to his four grandchildren, says he hasn’t decided on a retirement date yet. He says he hopes to continue working at least another couple of years.

What keeps him here? When he was offered a job after graduation, he could not think of a better place to work than St. Paul or UT Southwestern.

“But basically it’s the people I work with – that’s the honest reason I stayed on. They’re a good bunch of people who work in Hematology and the Core Lab.”