For those of us civilians who like to watch adventure and military movies, taking in with awe the fantastic feats of heroes, we get to turn off the TV and go back to our normal lives. In the daily grind of civilian life, it's easy to forget that there are men and women in uniform, living an adventure like the frames of a film, but for them, it’s their job.

Matt Ramp of Battle Ground had a career like that. A retired Air Force Pararescue (PJ) Chief Master Sergeant, his primary mission was combat rescue—the rescue of personnel or sensitive items that may fall behind enemy lines. Achieving such missions requires extensive training.

As Matt puts it, “All PJs are trained medics, but what distinguishes PJs from other military medics is the advanced skills beyond most others, and all PJs are trained in parachuting, both static line and military free fall, combat scuba diving, advanced survival and escape, rope rescue, vehicle extractions and many other skills that enhance their rescue capability.”

Active-duty military personnel regularly put their lives on the line, performing missions that are critical to their jobs. People like Matt give them confidence, knowing that the PJs are ready to save them when something goes wrong. He added that PJs are standing by to do rescues worldwide for military and civilian purposes. For example, there are always PJs standing by in helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft every time there is a NASA launch with personnel on board.

PJs are always training for their next mission, even during non-combat times or when not deployed. Matt continues, “The skill sets that we trained on made us rescue specialists, so at all of my assignments, we did peacetime rescues of civilians when conventional civilian rescue forces were unavailable or the risk was too high. For example, during the climbing season, there are PJs on Mount Denali, AK, staged to perform rescues if needed,” – a job he got to do!

One mission Matt and his team went on involved rescuing the pilot and passengers of a downed helicopter 500 miles off the coast of Baja California. The aircraft went down while sighting a group of tuna for a tuna boat. The PJs flew by plane to the crash site, parachuted into the water, following the rescue boat they dropped from the plane, inflated the boat in the water to navigate to the patients, who were pulled from the water with their small boats before the helo sank.  They jumped in to treat, stabilize, and care for the patients until the large tuna boat they were on got close enough to an island where they could land to transfer the patients to be flown to La Paz.

Another mission found his team rescuing a family in their small plane, which had crashed in the Blue Mountains of Oregon. After parachuting in during snowy weather, they found that the husband, who was the pilot, had his body stuck between the plane and a tree. They were able to set up their equipment to move the aircraft enough to free the man’s body and extract his wife and daughter from the plane. Sadly, the man did not survive his injuries. But his family did; an outcome that would have been different without the intervention of the PJs, as the weather conditions had prevented standard search and rescue from completing that mission.

After eight years of active duty, Matt transitioned to Pararescue Reserves, based in Portland. He served in that capacity for 19 years, concurrently taking on a job with the Vancouver Fire Department (VFD). Drawn to adventure and saving lives, he found that his PJ skills were a great asset as a fireman, and the skills he learned in firefighting also helped enhance his time in the reserves.

Interestingly, in Matt’s first 15 years at VFD, he spent five of them deployed in PJ duties! VFD was very understanding, thankfully allowing him the flexibility to fulfill his military duties.

He retired from the military in 2009, and from firefighting in 2023.

Matt and his wife Angel have two daughters, one son-in-law and three granddaughters. They moved from Vancouver to Battle Ground after Matt retired from the military, to be close to their grandkids and take advantage of the “perfect fit” it was for living away from the big city.

Upon his retirement from VFD, Matt rode his bicycle across the country, from Bangor, ME, to Battle Ground! He enjoys staying active and all things outdoors.

If you see Matt around town, give the guy a high-five! It’s an honor to have a hero to the heroes living in our community.