Most of us can recall the story of where we were when we first heard about the terrorist attacks on September 11 of 2001. But for Princeton diving alum Mary Mulcare, that’s only the beginning of the story.
Mulcare was a senior with the Tigers in the fall of 2001, serving as captain of the team and studying pre-med. She says she remembers being woken up by a hallmate and watching the first tower collapse on T.V.
It was at that point that Mulcare’s pager went off. See, the Tiger diver was also a certified Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), working with the local First Aid and Rescue squad since her sophomore year of college.
The senior raced to the local squad house, ready to step right into the horrifying images she’d just witnessed on the television screen.
“It was just an immediate reaction,” Mulcare says when asked if she had any hesitation to leave the comfort of her house and respond to the deadliest terrorist attack ever on American soil. “You get a call and you just go. There wasn’t really a second thought.”
As an EMT, Mulcare has seen her fair share of sudden and traumatic situations. 9/11 was one such event, and in fact, it was an earlier life-changing occurence that first got Mulcare involved in EMT work.
Between her freshman and sophomore seasons at Princeton, Mulcare had a teammate die from a sudden heart failure while working out. The teammate suffered from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a heart condition that is one of the leading causes of sudden, unexpected deaths among otherwise-healthy young athletes.
“There was no way we could have predicted it,” Mulcare says, “and nothing we could do once it happened.” Still, the pre-med student saw firsthand how suddenly health issues can arise, and how important some extra training could be to the health and well-being of the people around her.
That summer, Mulcare took a basic first aid course, following it up by getting full EMT certification. For the rest of her college career, Mulcare added 15 to 20 hours a week of EMT work to a schedule that already included a pre-med academic program at an Ivy League institution and a Division I athletics training regimen.
“Learning how to multi-task was key,” Mulcare says, adding that she spent many nights doing schoolwork in the squad house while waiting for emergency calls to come in.
Those busy years in the Princeton squad house were no doubt stressful for Mulcare. But they succeeded in preparing her not only for medical school, but for the day when that really big emergency page arrived.
“Mary had this electric smile,” Princeton’s head swimming & diving coach Susan Teeter recalls. “She’d come walking down the deck and you’d already feel happier.”
Mulcare(bottom left, below the podium) poses next to her co-captain Jocelyn Petrella and with the rest of her senior class after the Tigers won the Ivy League title her senior season. Courtesy of Susan Teeter, Princeton Swimming & Diving.
Teeter has been the head coach at Princeton for 31 seasons now, with Mulcare’s four seasons coming right in the middle of that run. Still, the diver clearly found a way to be memorable in the mind of her 16-time Ivy League champion head coach.
For Mulcare, the “infectious smile” and “lightness” of attitude that Teeter brings up when talking about her former diver are exactly the ways she wants to be remembered.
The diver has always been quick to point to intangibles as her biggest addition to a team effort.
“I love to cheer and support everyone,” Mulcare said when she was profiled in The Daily Princetonian back in 2001. “It’s where I can contribute most to this group.”
As far as her diving career goes, Mulcare is that rare athlete who isn’t quick to bring up her own athletic successes. In fact, when asked about her greatest diving accomplishment, Mulcare doesn’t even mention scores, wins or competitions.
“Being captain of the team was my biggest contribution to the team, and my biggest success as a part of the team,” she says.
Of the huge group congregated in the squad house that September morning, only 4 were selected to make the 50-mile trip up the coast to New York City. Among those four was Mary Mulcare.
She still calls it “fortunate” that she was among those selected for the volunteeer squad, focused more on the opportunity to help than the immense responsibility and high-stress work the team would have to face. And Mulcare says her experience as a diver might have been a major reason why she was selected.
“We were all four seniors,” says Mulcare, “and I think that was a big part of it. But I think they were looking to bring together people with different skill sets, but all with good teamwork ability.”
That teamwork ability is something Mulcare attributes to her diving career, especially at Princeton, where Mulcare praised Coach Teeter for her emphasis on unifying swimmers and divers into one cohesive unit.
Teeter says that emphasis is a major part of her program’s philosophy.
“I think it’s hard when you’re training at different ends of the pool to form really close relationships,” Teeter says. “Any kind of team building or life skills exercises we do, we make sure it’s mandatory for both swimmers and divers as a way to try to bring the team together.”
That focus on team profoundly affected Mulcare, who says she uses her teamwork skills on a daily basis, even today as a full-time doctor.
Mulcare talks about the large numbers of people all at work simultaneously when dealing with a emergency patient. Between multiple doctors, nurses, surgeons, equipment technicians and more, Mulcare says there might be 10-12 people each with their own unique responsibility working together to save a patient’s life.
“Medicine is a team sport,” Mulcare says. “I think that’s sometimes lost on people.”
Mulcare tells a story about one of Teeter’s team building exercises. It’s not medicine related. It’s not even really diving related. And yet it’s stuck with Mulcare this long, something that stands out of the blur of school, sports and EMT work.
“We were all in the team room,” Mulcare recalls. “All we had to do was walk around the room and give people compliments, really genuine compliments.”
Teeter says the team still does this exercise, at least once a season. The team has taken to calling it “Sticker Day.”
“They beg for it,” says Teeter.
The premise is simple enough. But what surprised Mulcare was what was so difficult about it.
“The hardest part was just accepting the compliment and saying thank you,” she says. “You wanted to try to give a compliment right back, or to downplay what they were saying.
“It was a huge lesson in how to give and accept compliments.”
For someone who deals with life and death on a daily basis, complimenting skills might not seem like a high priority. But for Mulcare, it’s simply a part of something bigger.
“It’s all a part of how you interact with the people around you,” she says. “It’s all about being a part of a team.
Back to that September Tuesday. Mulcare and her four-person team were on the road, flying down the interstate. While most of New York was fleeing from smoldering towers and collapsing clouds of rubble, she was driving towards them.
“The eeriest thing was driving down I-95 with no one on it,” says Mulcare. “It was just empty.”
Cutting the hour-long drive in half, the crew made it to a safe area and started setting up a medical refuge, racing to get things in order before victims started being transported from Ground Zero.
The race turned out to be mostly for naught, though, as the fully-operational camp was met by an utter silence in the way of injured victims.
“We sat there and waited,” Mulcare says. “We were just waiting for patients to arrive. It was probably the longest few hours of my life.”
The patients never made it.
“We were hearing the reports from inside. Pretty soon you started to realize that there wouldn’t be anyone from inside the towers for us to treat.
“Everyone either walked out,” Mulcare says, emotion evident in her voice, “or they didn’t.”
Teeter didn’t know about the lifechanging experience her diver was having until a few days after the towers collapsed.
Recruiting in Michigan over 9/11, Teeter was unable to book a flight home in the aftermath of the terrorist attack. Instead, she jumped into a car and drove halfway across the country, back to Princeton.
“Being on the East Coast, we’re right there,” says Teeter. “I didn’t know if we had parents or alumni hurt.”
As she reconnected with her team to survey the damage, a team member mentioned Mulcare’s service.
“Somebody on the team said, ‘you know, Mary Mulcare has been living out at a medical camp, waiting for people to come out so she can treat them’,” Teeter recalls.
“I just remember being so proud that an athlete I coached was making such a big sacrifice,” she says. “So often we open up the newspaper and read about stupid things athletes do. But here’s a kid who could be doing her schoolwork, or training for her sport, and instead she’s doing something so selfless.”
It’s obvious Teeter was impressed with her young captain. Surprised? Not so much.
“That’s just who Mary is,” she says.
13 years later, Mulcare is the Chief Resident of Emergency Medicine at the New York Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. Photo courtesy of Mary Mulcare.
Now, almost 13 years later, Mulcare is an attending physician at the Weill Cornell Medical Center/New York Presbyterian Hospital, working in emergency medicine just over 5 miles up Manhattan island from the spot where those gaping holes in the New York skyline once stood.
“When I talk about my storyline, I say it’s a combination of my diving experience and my EMT work,” Mulcare says. “I learned skills in each that were complementary.”
As an experience emergency physician, Mulcare now heads a whole staff of highly-trained doctors working in some of the highest-stress environments possible.
“I’m able to be a leader of that team because I was a captain of the diving team,” she says.
In fact, she needed those diving skills just to become a doctor in the first place.
“Being a part of a swimming and diving program was a great foundation to go into medical school,” Mulcare says. “It’s a rigorous sport. You’re there early, you’re there late.”
Then, too, another important lesson Mulcare attributes to her diving career is learning how to deal with failure.
“In sports, you learn how to bring that around and make something positive out of it,” she says. “Taking lessons learned and turning them into positive things for next time around – you don’t want to walk into a hospital without knowing how to do that.”
And on top of all that, the once-Tiger captain says perhaps the most important lesson learned isn’t even something she does, but something she allows her team to do for her:
“Learning how to rely on other people when you need it,” Mulcare says. “That’s vital.”
Something so big and so small, so obvious and yet so hidden. Something that could start simply – like taking a compliment. And accepting it.
Great read. Many of us have been fortunate enough to be surrounded by people like Mary throughout our careers as athletes and/or coaches.
Great piece! Dr Mulcare continues to be an inspiration to the junior physicians she had trained and mentored, myself included! I had never heard this story but am not surprised that she would respond the way she did. She is a joy to work with and no matter the situation in the emergency department, she always has that electric smile. She is the consummate team player and leader; I echo her swim coach’s sentiment that whenever you see Mary walking through the ER, you already feel happier.