Tuckman is an Immigration Services Officer, coming into daily contact with people in distress, many of them ill, all of them needing his presence and concern. After the ambulance crisis, he was in recovery for weeks, not returning to his job for fear of infecting people he was eager to serve.

Doing his job despite risks isn’t new to him. In his decades as a Red Cross volunteer, he’s done emergency first aid, run shelters in wildfires and floods, done casework during numerous hurricanes, led teams responding to house and apartment fires.

Along the way he’s trained hundreds of young people in disaster relief procedures and has been a Red Cross information officer, getting warnings and disaster updates to the public. Along with his public health actions, he’s repeatedly marched in demonstrations that were met with police arrests. The issues that have sent him into the streets? He’s against animal testing in the cosmetic industry, minefields, violence, hunger, and malaria. He’s marched for affirmative action, refugees, and women’s rights.

If anyone understands the poet John Donne’s line, “I am involved in mankind,” it’s David Tuckman.