Bi-County Paramedic Supervisor Steve Waldeck was ready to hit the hay Saturday near midnight when he got a call to attend to three shooting victims in Marysville.

On went the uniform again.

Waldeck had gone on duty at 5:30 a.m., and more than 18 hours later was ready to handle the gory end of a concert at the Allyn Scott Youth & Community Center.

"It was a tough night," he said.

And it wasn't over.

Waldeck was among 50 law enforcement and emergency medical workers who responded to the shooting, including 16 Yuba City police officers, most of whom were working overtime or pulling extra shifts, according to Police Chief Richard Doscher.

The shooting followed a rash of violence in Yuba-Sutter earlier in the week, including two drive-by shootings and the discovery of three bodies in a Linda apartment.

The extra on-duty hours seen by local law enforcement agencies in recent months, coupled with an increasingly high proportion of violence-related calls, "takes a toll on officers," said Doscher.

Violence — especially gang-related violence — is rough on paramedics, too, said Alex Bumpus, vice president of Bi-County Ambulance.

Any time an incident is suspected to be gang-related, "you wait for retaliation that same night or during the next couple days," he said.

Incidents like the one on Saturday pull resources away from where they are needed elsewhere.

A woman who reported heart trouble to 911 dispatchers at 1:40 a.m. Sunday had to wait for an ambulance to be dispatched from Lincoln by an out-of-town company.

"All our units were tied up," Bumpus said.

The woman was reached within a reasonable period of time, Bumpus said, and was taken to a hospital.

In 2000, Doscher said, 56 percent of calls to Yuba City police were incidents considered to be "potentially combative," requiring two officers.

In 2007, 76 percent of calls required two officers.

Doscher projected his overtime budget for 2008-09 will be at least 7 percent higher than in 2007-08.

When Waldeck arrived at the youth center Saturday night, his patients — two of whom turned out to be in a state database of known gang members — lay in the midst of a chaotic scene that involved more than 300 mostly inebriated party- goers.

As gang violence has spread from metropolitan areas to more remote locales, the job has become more dangerous. So such scenes, he said, have increasingly been the focus of paramedic training nationwide.

"We have to deal with gangs more and more," he said, "so more and more, the emphasis is on scene safety."

Among the required lessons: "You never want to put two people who were just battling it out in the same rig," said Bumpus. "It becomes dangerous for the paramedics."

Marysville Police Chief Wally Fullerton, who came to the area last year from Los Angeles County, said gang violence in the Mid-Valley reflects much of what's happening elsewhere in the state.

"This is a suburb of Sacramento — a major metropolitan area," he said. "You can think it's not the case, but it is. There are real influences from other areas going on here."

Last week's series of violent incidents stretched thin an already-busy crew at Bi-County, which had its regular dizzying fare of medical emergencies and serious traffic accidents.

Waldeck left the party-turned-shootout in Marysville at about 1 a.m. Sunday and returned exhausted to his Yuba City home once again.

But sleep was not in the cards. Within a half hour, a call about multiple stabbings in Wheatland got him out of bed, pulling on his work clothes again.

According to Bumpus, the ambulance company has received an average nightly call rate far higher in January and February of this year than any month last year.

The company recently purchased a new ambulance to add to the fleet of 12, and has ordered two more to keep up with volume.

On a single day last month, Bi-County had 110 calls for service — twice as many as last year's average.

Situations like that, and like Saturday's string of events, "are off the wall kinds of nights," Bumpus said.

They leave us absolutely tapped," said Doscher.

He laughs at the thought of getting relief in the form of more staff positions.

But overworked or not, the emergency response business, "is what we signed on to do."

"It may be uncomfortable and it may be costly, but we're not in the giving-up business," he said.

Contact Appeal reporter Nancy Pasternack at 749-4712 or npasternack@appealdemocrat.com