Once on death’s door, a teen burn survivor is on a journey to help others
Article originally posted on mirrorindy.org. Original article can be seen here.
After surviving childhood trauma, Daniel Lynch became a Decatur Township EMT.
April 23, 2024
The way emergency medical technician Daniel Lynch sees it, it’s his job to make people’s worst days better.
EMTs provide on-the-spot first aid to people injured in car crashes, fires and similar situations and then take them to hospitals for more thorough care when necessary.
Fresh out of EMT training, the 19-year-old has been with the Decatur Township Fire Department for nearly two months and is eager to help Hoosiers the way they once helped him.
Lynch lives in Camby but was born in Kenya. When he was 6 months old he suffered burns to his body that were so severe he had to be brought to the U.S. for life-saving treatment.
Here, in the hands of Indiana University doctors and nurses, Lynch came back from the brink of death and began a journey to become an American citizen and thrive in his adopted country.
He has no memory of the events that brought him here as an infant, but still bears the scars.
“I’ve always had help around me no matter what my age,” Lynch said. “This is kind of wanting to give back to those kind-hearted people even though I may not help them personally. It’s about helping the community who helped me so much.”
From Kenya to the U.S.
Daniel’s journey began in Kenya, but he doesn’t remember much about the early days of his painful past. Most of what he knows comes from his adoptive parents, Pamela and Mark Lynch.
Pamela is a doctor and Mark, a former pastor at Camby Community Church on the far southwest side, is executive director of a nonprofit organization that helps underprivileged communities.
The Lynches met Daniel through friends involved with AMPATH Kenya, an IU partnership with officials from the Kenyan government and medical schools to establish health care services there.
In 2006, the Camby couple learned about a boy who was brought to a hospital by his mother in Nairobi, Kenya, with severe oil burns. It’s unclear what happened, but the mother had walked about six hours straight to get him treatment. But the boy’s health was failing, and after about two weeks into treatment, she abandoned him there.
Mark Lynch feels sympathy for the mother. He believes the mother’s choice must have been a difficult one, saying it didn’t look like the infant would survive.
Doctors, though, were able to treat Daniel’s burns and his health began to improve.
But due to the severity of his wounds, he required treatment from experts in the U.S. AMPATH staff made arrangements for his medical care in Indianapolis.
Meeting his future family
Daniel arrived in the U.S. on Jan. 21, 2007.
The Lynches and other volunteers cared for Daniel for the next six months, where he endured multiple surgeries and painful physical therapy. Even through the travails, the Lynches were able to see what kind of child Daniel was.
During one of his physical therapy sessions at the former Wishard Memorial Hospital, now the Sidney & Louis Eskenazi Hospital, Daniel displayed sympathy to other burn victims in a way that stuck with Lynch.
“So there’s six adults going through physical and occupational therapy from different burn injuries where it’s literally tearing muscle and hurts like hell, and Daniel walks over to this 40-year-old man who’s laying down with tears running down his cheek and starts petting his shoulder,” Lynch remembered. “Daniel was less than 3 years old. He knew what suffering was and knew that his touch would help. It was amazing.”
The family learned that once Daniel returned to Kenya, he would most likely be sent to an orphanage. His permission to remain in the U.S. would expire soon. The Lynches began thinking of adopting him to keep him in the U.S.
While Daniel was staying with a different host family at first, he was spending much of his time with the Lynches in their capacity as volunteers.
After a years-long and complicated adoption process — which is intended to prevent human trafficking in Kenya — and lots of ups and downs, the Lynches officially adopted Daniel in 2011 when he was in kindergarten. He became a U.S. citizen.
Growing up
Now officially a Lynch, Daniel was raised alongside his older sisters Macy and Navy. But, as Daniel recalls, growing up wasn’t easy.
Daniel would refuse to do school work and argue with family members from time to time. But his family said the internal and external scars of his injuries gave his rambunctiousness a sharp edge that affected how they got along.
“I was a difficult child,” Daniel admitted. “I was just mischievous getting into trouble, that type of stuff. But every kid has a little bit of that. Mine’s just, you know, a little bit more.”
At the time, and to a lesser extent now, Daniel felt self-conscious about his appearance.
“When I was younger, I knew something was different about me,” Daniel said. “Sometimes I wear a hat or something like that. I always wear a sleeve for compression on my arm.”
Those insecurities and other internal pressures led to his lashing out at times, his father said.
“I make no bones about this — he was hard to raise,” Mark Lynch said. “And he should be hard to raise. Think about the trauma he’s been through. Not only was he a typical boy, he had gone through horrible physical trauma and the mental trauma of being abandoned.”
The family sought help from counselors to help Daniel process his emotions, but they did little to help at first.
But then Daniel found an outlet. He began going to Hoosier Burn Camp, a week-long sleepaway camp for burn survivors. There, he met other kids like him who were burned at an early age and were growing up with that experience. The campers bonded over classes in archery, swimming, riflery, cooking, ukulele and other fun activities.
“I met some of my closest friends in the burn camp program. They’re wonderful people,” Daniel said.
At the burn camp, Daniel also met the people that help other people — the firefighters, paramedics, nurses and doctors who would serve as camp counselors.
Early in his life, Daniel wanted to be a doctor, like his mother, or a police officer, but meeting the camp counselors changed his aspirations.
“I loved hearing their stories, how they helped the community and all that,” Daniel said. “That’s kind of what I always wanted to do.”
One of the firefighters he met was Pascal Arnes, fire chief of the Decatur Township Fire Department, who helps handle logistics at the camp. Daniel immediately made an impression on him.
“His whole attitude about life was always positive,” Arnes said. “He was a good kid and it showed in the way he treated people.”
Talks with Arnes and the other first responders at the camp planted a seed in Daniel’s heart. He now had an idea of what he wanted to do with his life: help people.
“That’s kind of what I’ve always wanted to do,” Daniel said. “I always wanted to give back to the community they gave me so much.”
Daniel thrived at the camp, and his experiences there helped improve his behavior at home.
One day, Daniel went up to Arnes and told him his goal of becoming a firefighter paramedic.
“He always had that determination behind him of what he wanted to do in life,” Arnes said. “And despite his struggles, he wanted to live a normal life and wanted to get into a career where he can now help people.”
Pursuing a dream
As Daniel grew older, he and his family knew that Daniel would not pursue college. Instead, Daniel would try to jump into the firefighting world as soon as possible.
But would Daniel be able to physically perform the duties of an EMT?
He admits that the burns affected his body’s mobility somewhat, especially because his left hand was permanently damaged, but surgeries have mostly corrected that problem. He deals with lingering mobility issues by adjusting how he approaches a situation.
“I just move a different way,” he said. “I find whatever way works best for me. I’ve learned to adapt.”
With physical concerns addressed, the Lynches decided to support Daniel’s pursuit of an EMT career by withdrawing him from Herron High School, which focused on college prep, and enrolling him in the Decatur Township School for Excellence, which allowed him a quicker path to graduation.
Daniel also kept in touch with Chief Arnes.
“He came to me one day and he told me he was thinking about becoming an EMT and, one day, a firefighter,” Arnes said. “He wasn’t quite old enough yet. I told him, ‘Get your EMT (training) and if a spot comes open, and I have the opportunity to hire you, I will.’”
He graduated high school in 2023 and enrolled in EMT training soon after. He completed his training in December.
On March 12, Daniel was sworn in as a Decatur Township Fire Department EMT and was assigned to Station 71 at the Decatur Township Government Center.
“I honestly do love it,” Daniel said. “I get to help people on their worst days, I get to be with some amazing people on each shift and I get to meet new people every day.”
In a little more than a year, when he turns 21, he plans to further his firefighting career by taking the first steps to become a firefighter paramedic. And he hasn’t forgotten about his friends at burn camp. He plans on becoming a camp counselor there.
“You don’t 100% know who you are after you get those burns sometimes,” he said. “Being able to help those kids through that, knowing that I can make a positive impact on them, would honestly make me happy.”