Meet Your Neighbor
Anne Stearns
BY MARY LANCASTER INDEPENDENT WRITER
Date of birth: July 5, 1968

ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent

Likes most about Nantucket: That it has a small-town feeling.

Likes least about Nantucket: The gas prices.

Favorite TV show: "House" The daughter of a career Navy officer, Anne Stearns lived in many different places while growing up, and all of them were cities.

She was born in San Diego, Calif. and when her father retired the family was living in Newport, R.I. where she graduated from high school. Her first job was as a restaurant manager for the Marriott Corporation where she spent 13 years, including three in Maui, before moving here in September 1999. Stearns had visited Nantucket once before and was taken by the small community atmosphere.

"I've lived here longer than anywhere," said Stearns, who is an emergency room technician at Nantucket Cottage Hospital. "Some feel it's like living in a fishbowl, but I like going to the Stop & Shop and running into 20 people."

As it turned out, Stearns had gone to the same high school as Robin and E.J. Harvey, and when she moved to the island she initially worked for them at the Sea Grille before being employed by the Department of Public Works.

"I was picking up cigarettes and walking through town talking to people," she said. "Anyone who knows me knows I love to do that."

In August 2001, Stearns joined the staff of NCH where she assists the nurses by taking patients' vital signs, registering them and cleaning wounds, for example.

"And running the opposite way if someone throws up. It's never boring," she said with a laugh, adding that she especially likes helping young patients feel comfortable in the hospital setting and has earned the nickname "Baby Whisperer."

After receiving her emergency medical technician's license in 2002, she became an on-call EMT with the fire department in addition to her job at the hospital. This summer, she will also be a special officer with the police department.

"I would like to work the strip at night. I think they need a more mature person to help with the overflow," said Stearns, who is currently studying on-line through the University of Phoenix to obtain her degree in criminal justice and is considering forensic science as a possible future career.

"I'm too old to do what I call 'the letters' - the CIA or the FBI," she said.

In her free time, Stearns likes to read and gets through three or four books a week. She also enjoys walking on the beach with a friend's golden retrievers, movies, taking summer drives around the island, people watching, "and the Nantucket triangle - work, Stop & Shop, then home."

On May 17 and 18, Stearns will be in Boston's Avon Breast Cancer Walk, a 26-mile walk that can be accomplished in one day or over the two days. She is walking for her sister, who is a cancer survivor who was diagnosed in January 2007 at the age of 37, and for the late Sharon Nicholas, an emergency room clerk who died of recurring breast cancer in February after being cancer free for five years. Stearns said she will have at least five names on her t-shirt for the walk and can add more, and since January she has already reached $3,800 in pledges of the $5,000 she hopes to raise toward treatment research.

Though Stearns would like to travel around the country someday, she is content on Nantucket and hopes to stay a few more years if she can continue to afford the local costs.

"It truly is a unique experience," she said of island life. "And it sounds like a cliche, but I enjoy helping somebody at work when they're sick and we can figure out what's wrong with them. At the hospital we truly like each other. I feel this is home.

It's awesome." I