Ignore the grin. Adam Auerbach isn't fooling around. He's really a lifesaver.
Bear with the Tufts senior through the gruesome tales, because somewhere, hidden among the blood and guts and awkward baby deliveries, are the tangible qualities that make Auerbach one of the Jumbos' all−time great kickers, manifested through eight weeks aboard an Israeli ambulance.
During the summer, Auerbach worked as an EMT for Magen David Adom, Israel's national ambulance corps. An EMT in the States for three years now, Auerbach originally was going to join Medics Without Borders and work in Ghana, but the signs all pointed toward Israel. He went on Taglit−Birthright his sophomore year and speaks Hebrew. Plus, he found out he was going to be living three blocks from the beach.
On his first shift, Auerbach responded to a tourist who got hit by a motorcycle and had blood gushing out of an eight−inch gash across her arm. When he arrived on the scene, the woman and her husband — tourists from Mexico City — only spoke English and Spanish, so Auerbach led the call on his first day. Oh, and he's not fluent in Hebrew, so he and his ambulance team had to rely on simple terms and hand gestures to get by together.
"It's definitely an adrenaline rush," Auerbach said. "One of the interview questions that they asked me was how can I deal with adverse situations. When you get to a scene and you see somebody's life is at stake, it's not like, ‘Oh my god, they're bleeding.' This is your job. You just have to help them."
The list of cases sounds more like a horror movie script than a recollection of a college student's summer.
There was the time an Ethiopian woman insisted on delivering a baby on all fours. Auerbach couldn't eat for three days after that one.
Or the time Auerbach had to help lift a man vertically out of a ditch on a backboard after he fell into a manhole. It was against protocol, but pulling him out flat could have killed him.
"It's just your job," said Auerbach, shrugging off the notion that he consciously thinks of himself as a lifesaver. "Somebody has to do that job, and it's yours to do. I got invaluable experience from the program in dealing with those kinds of difficult situations."
Auerbach, who began kicking in 10th grade, is two field goals away from breaking Tufts' all−time record of 21 — set in 1991 by Chris Wild (LA '92) — but hasn't gotten that many chances thus far in an offense that's scored just 48 points through five games. Still, he's 3−for−3 with three games remaining — two of which are at home — putting that elusive mark well within reach.
"Two more, what do you want to know?" Auerbach said when asked about the record. "I'm excited. It'll be something nice to look back on. I'm looking forward to getting that. When it comes down to it, I'm just happy to help put my team on the board."
Over his four−year career with the Jumbos, Auerbach is 20−for−35 on field goals, with a career−long of 44 yards notched during his sophomore year. And, of course, there was the Homecoming game that same season, when the lefty booted a 37−yarder with 27 seconds left to tie things up against Bowdoin, then came back in overtime with a 35−yardgame−winner that earned him NESCAC Special Teams Player of the Week honors.
"He's a solid kicker, a great teammate and even more so he's a great person," interim head coach Jay Civetti said. "He's had some big game−winning field goals and has done a nice job so far in his career."
Standing outside Cousens Gym after Tuesday's practice, Auerbach — affectionately known to some teammates as "Red" after longtime Celtics coach Red Auerbach — received more than a few catcalls about his record pursuit, which he shrugged off with a laugh, instead drawing parallels between his summer work aboard the ambulance and his fall gig in football pads.
"Being an EMT has clearly higher stakes than whether you're going to win a game or put points on the board, but it's the same kind of situation that you're in, and I guess I'm attracted to that," Auerbach said. "You get one shot. You have to empty your mind and do your job. There's no repeats."
Except on a macro level, where Auerbach's repetition of the same success has him saving games — and lives.
