Dad Made Millions on Wall Street, Then Gave It Up to Become Paramedic

In January 2021, Jonathan Kleisner was one of two paramedics who provided care and hospital transport to a patient after a rescue from New York City’s Hudson River. 

The emergency response came six years after he’d earned the title of rescue medic for the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) — a seemingly vast career shift from his original role as a commodities trader, according to his LinkedIn page. 

Once making millions of dollars a year, the father of two left Wall Street in 2012. He now makes an annual salary of $110,000, according to his recent New York Times profile. But for Kleisner, the change was necessary. 

“I was a person who created nothing, gave nothing to anybody,” Kleisner, 55, told the paper of running his own investment firm. “Sometimes I feel like an outlaw who’s trying to get to heaven. Or maybe a few good nights of sleep.”

For Kleisner — who is one of five people at the FDNY with enough expertise to train other rescue medics — it was a chance to escape a life that brought him no joy, and to prove himself. His elite training has allowed him to administer aid in the Holland Tunnel, rescue people from the tops of buildings and help those extricated from raging fires, according to the Times.

“People ask me, ‘Why would you risk your life for $18 an hour?’” he told the outlet. “I am a hugely competitive person. I’m pretty good at what I do.”

PEOPLE has contacted both Kleisner and the FDNY for further comment.

The New Yorker got his start in finance when he was 17 years old when he worked as a file clerk on the New York Futures Exchange, according to Opalesque Futures Intelligence.

In 1991, he began to trade commodity index futures and eventually became managing principal of a real estate equity firm, according to his LinkedIn page. Despite Kleisner’s success — fueled in part by his willingness to be aggressive in a cutthroat industry — he was unhappy, according to the Times. 

A new path began to appear in 2008 after a person in his hiking group was assisted by medics while they were attempting to summit Mount Rainier in Washington State. Impressed by what the medics were able to do in such dangerous conditions, Kleisner went on to take a an emergency medical technician class and sign up for the FDNY’s academy.

Though he didn’t give up on his industry immediately, Kleisner volunteered part-time as an E.M.T. His mom saved an article that was written after he helped restart a man’s heart, according to the Times. 

“I don’t think I ever saw my mom more proud of me,” Kleisner told the outlet. “That was a seminal experience.”

By the time he was 41, the trader was asked to try out for the paramedics’ academy — and surpassed recruits half his age. 

He left Wall Street behind, and would continue to climb the medic ranks. In one of his more storied rescues, Kleisner helped save a man who weighed almost 1,000 lbs. from the top of a six-story building in Harlem. When the patient began to struggle to breathe, Kleisner drilled a hole into the man’s sternum as a way to intubate him, the paper reported. 

“Jonathan is the top of the mountain,” Capt. Frederick Saporito, who recently retired after leading the FDNY’s rescue medic program for decades, told the Times. “He has it all.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Despite Kleisner’s confidence, some of his more challenging calls have stayed with him. He told the paper he will forever remember an 11-year-old girl who died along with her parents and two siblings after a fire broke out at a residential tower in the Fordham Heights neighborhood. 

“That’s a misguided concept, processing all this trauma,” Kleisner told the Times. “It’s not going anywhere. You have to learn how to live with all of this.”

Though Kleisner could easily retire full-time to his home in the Catskills, he presses on.