Festivals like BottleRock are known for giving legendary artists a platform to perform and springboarding up-and-coming musicians into stardom.
For volunteers at the Bay Area's mobile medical clinic clinic Rock Medicine, the festival environment also serves as a gateway into the world of emergency care.
Such was the case for Rock Medicine's director Gordon Oldham in 1988. The 14-year-old found himself in a medical tent for an Ozzy Osbourne show - a far cry from his previous job at Waterworld in the Cal Expo in Sacramento.
" It was something else," he said of the concert. "It was kind of an eye-opener for other things in the world. I was so closed off to what I thought I knew."
Oldham was training to become a lifeguard when he stumbled across an advertisement for Rock Medicine, which has aimed to set the standard in "non-judgmental event medicine" since 1973. The clinic was the brainchild of the legendary Bay Area concert promoter Bill Graham and founder Dr. George "Skip" Gay.
"My parents had no idea what I was doing," Oldham recalled. "I filled out all this paperwork and sent my professional CPR card in. Next thing I know, I get an envelope back from them saying, 'You're good to go.'"
Oldham has worked with the Bay Area nonprofit ever since, initially starting as a "little logistics boy" to now directing the program, which has about 1,400 current volunteers who include current nurses, clinicians and support staff, all of whom treat eventgoers for free.
"We all do goofy things when we're young," Oldham admitted. "Our motto is, we take care of the person right here, right now, without (involving) police, fire or the local hospital, and get them back with their family and friends at the end of the night."
Rock Medicine has been serving BottleRock attendees since the event's inception in 2013, and the festival's 12th edition is no exception. The mobile clinic seeks to bring medical treatment to all kinds of Bay Area venues from Levi's Stadium to Golden Gate Park, which help lighten the load on local hospitals and medical professionals.
Though volunteers now generally have to be over the age of 18 for insurance reasons, the organization has maintained the only necessary qualification to join is a CPR certification.
"There's a place for everybody," Oldham said.
The clinic only has two full-time employees, one of them Oldham, and is funded through donations. All on-site staff treat patients free of charge, whether they are musicians, general admission ticket holders or someone near the festival grounds in need of attention.
A portion of Rock Medicine's 70 volunteers can be found floating around BottleRock, equipped with walkie-talkies, to help extract injured attendees from barricades and get them to the clinic, which has a sizable piece of real estate near the Napa Valley Expo's Third Street entrance near downtown Napa.
Inside the white event tent, tie-dyed tapestries and Tibetan prayer flags act as makeshift dividers between a sitting area where BottleRockers can take a breather, and a makeshift doctor's room that includes a stretcher, various different monitoring systems, and boxes on boxes of sanitized supplies for ailments ranging from heat stroke to falls to busted lips in need of stitching.
According to Oldham, the clinic is equipped to deal with all kinds of medical emergencies as well as disaster scenarios, such as when two armed suspects fleeing a robbery on Hagen Road jumped the fence into BottleRock in 2018.
"We closed the perimeter and then they apprehended the guy very quickly," he said. "Everything went back to normal. Nobody even knew it happened."
The types of and frequency of injuries can vary depending on the event, according to American Canyon nurse Pam Lofttus, who has also been with Rock Medicine for 35 years, starting with a Madonna concert at the Oakland Coliseum.
"Heavy metal shows, there's a lot of trauma," she said, reminiscing about a Metallica performance at the old Candlestick Park in 2000. "We sutured over 90 people."
Loftus' colleague Penny Miller has been volunteering with Rock Medicine for almost half a century and is helping BottleRockers in the big tent this year.
In the case of the Napa festival, Miller said Rock Medicine volunteers see more of an increase in injuries related to designer drugs, though most festivals greatly mirror the rest of what's going on in society.
" We have had to learn quickly how to manage the consequences of someone who is not having a very good experience on Ecstasy," she said, noting the clinic is fully stocked with medications like naloxone, the drug also known as Narcan that is used to reverse opioid overdoses.
Miller, now 69, said that Rock Medicine gave her the kind of support and confidence to transition from lab technician work into the nursing field. She currently works as a nurse practitioner at Methodist Hospital and Mercy General Hospital in Sacramento and said the field training is invaluable.
" We don't have X-rays, we don't have CT scans. We don't have much of anything," she said. "You really have to depend on yourself to get through this, on your experience, and be able to work collaboratively with other people."
Though Rock Medicine volunteers do a lot with a little, Oldham emphasized it is a full medical clinic and is comparable to many emergency rooms around the country.
This training, Miller said, is what helps make Rock Medicine such a unique and valuable experience for younger volunteers.
San Francisco EMT Lauren Tran started volunteering for Rock Medicine two years ago. The 24-year-old found community in the organization and was drawn to the non-judgmental approach to event medicine.
That being said, she still had to pay her dues.
"Everyone has to clean barf buckets," she said. "It's a rite of passage."
Tran has both experienced Rock Medicine as a patient and as a volunteer. A former raver, Tran said she came out of retirement last year to see the EDM artist Millennium at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium after working the mobile clinic for the previous nights of the show.
Tran admitted she may have had a bit too much to drink, among other things.
"It was so hot. I couldn't breathe and I felt like I was gonna pass out," she said. "I was sitting on the stairs with a vomit bag attached to my face. The two supervisors at the time leading the show walked by me and made eye contact with me."
Her colleagues waltzed her back to the clinic, to be assessed by the Rock Medicine doctor on duty.
"Dr. Mary popped her cute little head in and I was like, 'Dr. Mary, don't look at me, please!'" she said. "I felt so loved and taken care of because you get really tight with these people."
Tran caught the bug, and worked 89 shows last year, even though she works full time with the emergency response company American Medical Response as an EMT in San Francisco.
"My co-workers at AMR give me so much (expletive)," she said of the camaraderie. "They're always like, why would you volunteer for something you get paid for now? It's fun. It is work, but it's really not. It's play for me."
It's that sense of community that has kept many of the Rock Medicine staff on duty for decades. Tran intends on being one of those people, and her Rock Medicine elders have taught her the most valuable lesson of all - humor.
"If you take it too seriously, it really dampens your spirit and soul," she said. "Everyone's always laughing and smiling in the clinic, even if it gets really busy, even if there's a serious medical trauma. It makes for a great team environment."