I arrived at the Lodi Fire Department’s Station One on West Elm Street just after 10 a.m. Wednesday for a four-hour ride-along to get an idea of how many calls the firefighters respond to in a day, and barely had time to shake hands with training officer Paul Alvarez before we responded to a traffic collision at the intersection of Turner and Lower Sacramento roads. Speeding down north on Church Street in a gray Dodge Challenger with the siren blaring, Alvarez slowed as we approached a red light at Turner Road before once again picking up speed. We arrived within minutes to find firefighters placing red metal struts on either side of a green Chevrolet minivan that had overturned before carefully extracting a passenger and helping emergency medical technicians load her onto a stretcher before she and another patient were taken to the hospital.