MOLINE, Illinois-- 20-year-old Nick Pedulla answered the biggest call for help of his career the night of the Las Vegas shooting.
“When it happens, you’re running based off the knowledge in your brain, the hundreds of books that you’ve read, the thousands of clinical hours, the countless tests that you’ve taken,” says Pedulla.
An East Moline native and Las Vegas EMT, Pedulla and his team helped countless victims the night of the shooting, near the Tropicana Hotel, a few blocks away from the shooter’s hotel room.
He says at one point, he used his body to cover a woman who was shot in arm.
"The officer said, ‘there's a shooter on the roof everybody get down,’ I pulled her into me and I held her under my chest and I thought we were going to die right there,” says Pedulla.
He was later able to get the victim to safety.
This past week, the Las Vegas NHL team, the Vegas Knights honored Pedulla and several other first responders during a special ceremony before their first game.
Pedulla’s mother says his road to service started at United Township High School.
“I think… it started when he became a junior in high school... he started taking a fire science class,” says his mother Carole Ishmael.
Pedulla later joined a volunteer fire fighter program in Milan, with hopes of one day becoming a fire fighter.
Pedulla says, he decided to become an EMT in Las Vegas after his best friend died in a car crash the summer before their senior year of high school.
“He’s why I do the job, to help anybody that I can, in any way that I can,” he says.
Right now, Pedulla is studying to become a paramedic.