MSgt Joseph Brownell

Married to Ann Brownell.

Master Sgt. Joseph Brownell has rescued 24 people since being assigned as a medic to Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash., in 2008.

Brownell belongs to the 336th Training Support Squadron. His main job is to serve as a medic for the survival, evasion, resistance and escape school, but he is also frequently called by civilian law enforcement to rescue people in Idaho, Montana, Washington and Oregon. .

He spent close to 4,000 hours on call in 2011, and on one occasion last fall, he rescued nine people in one day. First, he was lowered 240 feet from a helicopter to rescue a hunter, but his work was far from over.

“Some [members] of the local search-and-rescue team — maybe shouldn’t have been out searching for other people — because they were all stranded now,” he said. “So at this time, it was about 9 o’clock at night, we had to go back and rescue the would-be rescuers. We got eight more.”

That was a unit record for the number of people saved in one mission, said Maj. Arthur Miller, commander of Brownell’s medical flight. Brownell also has the most saves of anyone who has ever served in the flight.

Brownell is an expert on medical issues, flying and the search-and-rescue mission, Miller said.

“He really is a kind of perpetual student of learning,” Miller said. “He’s always trying to learn something new, so he’s always delving into [Air Force Instructions] or reading up stuff. So he’s just very, very knowledgeable about how to do his job extremely well.”