The evening ended cool and rainy in southern Iraq on Oct. 30, where paramedic Stephanie Faber finished her usual 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. shift.

"And we hope there's no emergencies," she said.

Faber has worked for 25 months as a contract paramedic, and has endured attacks including a shelling that destroyed her personal quarters in Baghdad.

In Baghdad, she saw up to 20 injuries a day ranging from stubbed toes to severe war trauma.

Now she sees five or six cases a day, but she still endures long days.

"It keeps my brain occupied," Faber said. "You have to be ready at all times; you have to focus on people. You don't have to think about it as much"

She hangs out with co-workers and where she's based offers some recreational opportunities, she said. "But at the end of a 12-hour work day, you're just ready to go to bed."

The work also enables her to put aside the memories of the sexual assaults she said she endured from Rawlins police Capt. Adam "Lee" Meacham when she was teenager.

While the pressure of working as a paramedic gets her mind off the trauma, she still has some bad days, she said. "You just try to focus on the person in front of you, so they get the care they need."

For her own care, Faber sought justice by going through the proper channels to have Meacham prosecuted.

That didn't work, so she filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court, which ended - she thought - in June with a $250,000 cash settlement and a promise from Rawlins to admit what happened and take corrective measures.

But Rawlins and Meacham denied any sexual assaults occurred, and the only event it would acknowledge was that the ride-along program was faulty.

"It never was about money," Faber said. "It was so nobody else gets hurt again."

Alleviating pain and caring for others was a natural choice for her.

Faber, now in her late 20s, wanted to be a health care provider since her teens, she said.

She worked in the emergency room at the Carbon County Memorial Hospital, took courses at Western Wyoming Community College in Rock Springs to become a certified nursing assistant, studied for two years at the Florida Community College in Jacksonville, and became a certified paramedic.

Through a friend in Florida, she learned about the opportunity to work as a paramedic in Iraq.

Her annual contract expired a year ago, and she's been working on a month-to-month basis since then.

Faber tentatively plans to return to Colorado at the end of the year to be closer to her parents who are moving from Rawlins to Cheyenne, where her sister already lives.

While her parents are moving for better jobs, they also are moving in part because of the court case, she said.

The case has been harder on her family members than herself, Faber said. "They see it in the newspaper articles, they see it with people on the streets."

Contact Tom Morton at (307) 266-0592 or Tom.Morton@trib.com