Fluvanna County High School 2023 graduate Gracie Clifton has received the prestigious Thomas Jefferson EMS Council Regional Award and Scholarship for Outstanding Contribution to EMS by a Student. This competitive, $1,000 scholarship is awarded to a high school senior, recent high school graduate, or GED recipient who is 21 or under. Winners must currently be affiliated with an EMS agency and be enrolled, or planning to enroll, in an institution of higher learning or an accredited ALS (Advanced Life Support) training program. Regional Award winners are eligible to compete with each other to receive the state Governor’s Award which includes a $5000 scholarship.

Clifton was named Outstanding Junior EMT student in 2021. She earned her National Registry EMT and Virginia EMT certifications in May 2022. In her senior year, she was in FCHS’s EMT 3 program acting as a teaching assistant in class and a mentor for first-year EMT students. 

In addition, she was a Fluvanna County Rescue Squad junior member. Clifton ran several volunteer shifts each week at FCRS, totaling several hundred hours in the span of her senior year. She also worked part-time as an EMT for Delta Response Team and volunteered with the Louisa County Volunteer Rescue Squad. This fall, she is enrolled in the current Paramedic cohort at Piedmont Virginia Community College.

Clifton is “extremely passionate about prehospital medicine and is already an invaluable asset to emergency services in our region,” said FCHS EMS instructor Sharon Payne who nominated Clifton for the award.

For more information about FCHS’s EMT program, please visit these articles:

https://theflucobeat.com/showcase/2023/10/04/fchs-ems-program/ 

https://theflucobeat.com/fluco-features/2022/02/02/the-business-of-creating-emts/