Adventures of a First-Responder Role Player

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Since June 2007, I have been a volunteer civilian role player and moulage (realistic injury makeup) artist for my local police and medical personnel. I've assisted with police tactical training, disaster response exercises, and medical scenarios. I am the daughter of a former police officer, a member of CERT (Community Emergency Response Team - civilians trained in small fire suppression, search and rescue, and trauma first aid), and have spent way too much time in hospitals for various health challenges, so this has been a great way to put all of that experience to use. As a role player, I've played a wide variety of characters, including a hostage at gunpoint, a hostile suspect in a police interview/interrogation, a trapped and injured earthquake victim, and a non-English-speaking car accident victim. As a moulage artist, I'm the one responsible for making "victim" role players look convincingly injured! Stab wounds, gunshot wounds, burns, broken bones.... depending on the scenario, the list is endless! Because the people I work with are very nice, they reimburse me for the cost of supplies when I do moulage for them. My work as a role player is as an unpaid volunteer; the only compensation I get for that is sincere thanks and appreciation, lunch on the longer work days, pictures and videos of the exercises, and lots of fun stories! :-) I've gotten all sorts of responses when I tell people about this. Do you think that using role players in training like this is a good idea? If you had the opportunity, would you participate in something like this? Why or why not? Do you have any questions about law enforcement and medical training, fake blood and gory makeup, some of the fun things that happen during these exercises, some of the weird characters I've played, or anything else? Feel free to ask away! This has been a great experience, and I have tons of stories to share!