Search and Rescue stalwart honoured on Australia Day

He joined the squad almost 50 years ago, only six months after it started.

He has remained an active member ever since.

In this year’s Australia Day honours, Mr Jezewski has received an Emergency Services Medal for his efforts.

He was humbled by the honour, but pleased.

“You don’t do these things for medals, but when you do receive one, it’s a bit of an honour,” he said.

Mr Jezewski joined the squad in 1974 as a 24-year-old.

Half-a-century later, at 74, he has no plans to give it up.

“While I’m fit enough, I’d like to keep going,” Mr Jezewski said.

It is an unbelievable number of years of service as a volunteer.

His brother Eddie Jezewski was a founding member of Shepparton Search and Rescue, and soon both siblings became involved.

“Back in those days we did a lot of swimming and diving,” Mr Jezewski said.

With their diving abilities, the brothers were approached by a police officer who asked if they could help in water searches locally.

The officer trained them up and the rest is history.

Initially they were involved in many searches of the Boulevard swimming hole, as it was known in those days, Waranga Basin and Greens Lake.

The squad then bought lighting to allow water searches to continue after dark.

“It didn’t matter because it was all dark under the water,” Mr Jezewski said.

This led to the squad asking Ambulance Victoria if they could help by providing lighting at road rescues.

Things snowballed from there, with squad members trained to help in road rescues rather than just providing the lighting.

In 1978, the squad bought a Hurst jaws of life, after seeing the good work the equipment was being used for at crash scenes in the US.

The Shepparton organisation was only the second in Australia to buy a jaws of life kit.

“That was a revolution of road rescue,” Mr Jezewski said.

“That was a marvellous piece of equipment. That made us.”

And the squad has gone from strength to strength since then.

Since starting with the team, there has not been much Mr Jezewski has not done, having spent time as equipment officer, president and secretary.

Currently he is the assistant equipment officer and also spends a lot of time mentoring new members.

There is also not much he hasn’t seen — with callouts to car, plane and train crashes over the years, as well as helping out during floods and with storm damage.

Mr Jezewski has led the response in thousands of road crash rescues and in-water recovery rescues over the years.

In addition to this, he has led more than 200 flood boat rescues during notable events such as the 1974, 1994 and 2022 floods in Shepparton.

But for him, every rescue is important, whether that be a road rescue – which he describes as “the most difficult but probably the most rewarding” part of his role – or a young boy who caught his fingers in a bath plughole and the squad had to dismantle the bathtub and the wall to get him out.

With 50 years of service and thousands of callouts, you’d imagine it might prove difficult for Mr Jezewski to name one standout occasion for him, but he was quick to answer.

It was the rescue of Bendigo’s Crystal Rexter from Greens Lake at Corop in 2020.

Shepparton Search and Rescue members were called out to what was expected to be a body retrieval after Ms Rexter had gone missing hours earlier in Greens Lake after a sudden storm rolled in.

Against all odds, Mr Jezewski, fellow Shepparton Search and Rescue member Gary Lovell, and Echuca-Moama Search and Rescue’s Montana Jordan found Ms Rexter alive in the lake and pulled her aboard.

“That would be my highlight,” Mr Jezewski said.

“We thought we were looking for a body and we found her alive. That was overwhelming.

“The conditions were horrific.”

For Mr Jezewski, being able to help people has kept him in the squad for so long.

“It’s the satisfaction... you know you have genuinely helped,” he said.

Having come to Australia in 1950 as a 15-month-old baby from Poland, Mr Jezewski said the Shepparton Search and Rescue Squad gave him a chance to help the country that had taken his family in.

“It’s good to give back to the community,” he said.

He also paid tribute to his wife Yvonne who has been with him through all the years of service to the squad, including all the late-night callouts.

“She’s been tremendous really,” he said.

Despite his age and many years of service, Mr Jezewski has no plans to leave the squad just yet.

“If I’ve still got my health, I’d like to keep going,” he said.

“I’ve been wearing the pager that long it’s like a second skin. You don’t go anywhere without it.”