Mikey Cao greeted the small encampment on Maynard Avenue South in the Chinatown International District (CID) on a sunny Friday morning in July. About six people mingled among three tents and a couple folding chairs, clustered under sparse shade. One of those people was a woman with an infected, week-old forearm laceration.
Cao’s EMT training kicked in. She asked the woman a few questions, inspected the wound, then cleaned and bandaged it after the woman declined the suggestion to go to urgent care. Nearby, Cao’s co-volunteers, Nehemiha Daniel and Cole Yagi, worked the rest of the camp, handing out water and snacks. Bernie Kay, a longtime community leader, supervised while the 911 dispatch radio strapped to his shoulder crackled intermittently.
It was an ordinary Friday for Cao, a 25-year-old EMT who volunteers with the International District Emergency Center (IDEC), providing medical aid to unhoused folks in the CID, addressing everything from stab wounds to cardiac calls.
“I’ve seen a lot of wounds like that,” Cao said. “It’s really easy to get cut, you know? And then not living in good conditions, it never really heals.”
Within about an hour and a half, Cao, Daniel and Yagi had approached 17 people scattered throughout the CID, asking if they needed help: a man outside Uwajimaya who requested narcan; two people whom Daniel referred to REACH, a local nonprofit that connects unhoused folks to services; and a woman sitting outside Fuji Bakery who asked for gauze.
Cao, Daniel and Yagi are three of a new generation of EMTs and volunteers reviving IDEC, the decades-old CID institution built by community watchdog Donnie Chin. On an average walk through the neighborhood, the group encounters anywhere from 15 to 30 people on the street, offering them water and snacks, according to Cao. The group stops to administer care to between two and eight people during each patrol.
Donnie Chin: IDEC’s founder and CID hero
In 1968, frustrated by the slow police and fire response times to the CID, Chin founded IDEC, alongside his best friend, Dean Wong. Chin was the heart of IDEC, always on the frontline, responding to radio calls for everything from stab wounds and emotional crises to building blackouts and broken windows. He was often on scene and in action before city first responders even arrived.
Chin led IDEC until 2015, when he was shot and killed in gang crossfire while responding to a 911 call. He is largely remembered as a hero and legend who lived to serve his neighborhood when the city’s efforts were inadequate.
When he died, the community questioned how the organization would carry on. Kay, who had known Chin since childhood and joined IDEC in 1995, said the board members at the time knew they wanted to continue. They just weren’t sure how. So IDEC remained operational, but went into a sort of hibernation.
“After Donnie was killed, people said, ‘Who’s gonna be the next Donnie?’ and I said, ‘Nobody, because who’s gonna work 24/7?’” said Connie Chin-Magorty, Donnie Chin’s sister, in a 2025 KING 5 documentary.
Ten years after Chin’s death, Cao would enter the scene. She would join IDEC in February 2025, and in under a year and a half, she would become a leader in the organization, recruiting more EMTs, fellow students and volunteers — enthusiastic young adults offering hours of their time and skill for free.
Today, the group meets up multiple times a week at a discrete headquarters in the CID. Prior to each shift, volunteers don vests and IDEC badges, prep a first aid bag with antiseptic, gauze, gloves, vitals equipment, glucose monitors, blood pressure cuffs and more, pack up the defibrillator, and grab a bag full of snacks and water to pass out.
“We basically have everything except oxygen tanks and an ambulance,” Cao joked. “I guess that’s street medicine for you.”
They head out in a group of at least three people — sometimes more if it’s expected to be a busier shift — checking in on unhoused residents like Chin used to, from Hing Hay Park all the way up to 12th Avenue and Jackson Street in Little Saigon.
The new generation
As Cao became more ingrained in IDEC, she helped rebuild its ranks. One of Cao’s first recruits was Zachary Rivera, an EMT who grew up in South Seattle. While Rivera has worked for AMR, he has a special respect for his fellow IDEC members.
“The way they treat people is impeccable,” Rivera said. “These guys have every reason to be burnt out for what they do, especially the places they visit and the people we talk to, they have every reason to not want to do this for free, not want to do this for volunteer work, but they still come out and do it. And I’m very proud of them.”
While Rivera went on to recruit other volunteers, he credits Cao for IDEC’s revival.
“Mikey is mainly responsible for the reason IDEC has the amount of people it does today and has this kind of resurrection,” Rivera said. “She convinced me to join. I recruited people, but if I didn’t ever get recruited by Mikey, those people wouldn’t be here.”
Other newer recruits include aforementioned volunteers Daniel and Yagi. Daniel, a 28-year-old certified EMT, was recruited by Cao in their North Seattle College class. He joined IDEC last summer, when Cao invited their class to volunteer for a first aid booth at the dragon boat race on Lake Union. Yagi, a 19-year-old Northwestern University student who recently got his EMT license, joined IDEC about a month ago, just in time to volunteer at the CID Summer Kickoff’s dim sum world record contest.
Having trained EMTs in IDEC is something the organization didn’t have in Chin’s time. Back then, most IDEC volunteers only had basic first aid training, if any. Chin himself was a self-taught paramedic who learned largely through experience on the street. He also didn’t carry the amount of equipment volunteers do today, and would often patrol solo.
Like Chin, IDEC’s younger volunteers aren’t afraid to step into some of the CID’s more difficult corners, including 12th Avenue and Jackson Street, an area known for safety issues and often occupied by struggling unhoused folks.
“These guys [the volunteers] like to go up there,” Kay said. “If you ever come and watch these guys, they’re good — they’re good at serving the homeless community.”
Cao and her team often encounter the same people more than once, like the woman outside Fuji Bakery. The first time they met her, she had a swollen foot injury, which Cao said they treated. Later, she had glass embedded in it, and provided treatment again.
“She’s really sweet,” Cao said. “I know she has a case manager, but I know the state of services around here are inconsistent at best.”
“There’s some days where she looks really good, and other days where it’s like, life’s getting hard again,” she added.
While some people Cao and her team approach might have “healthy levels of distrust,” they’ve never been responded to with hostility, she said.
“Most people, once they realize what we’re doing, they’re honestly really appreciative of the help,” Cao said.
“It kind of makes me feel weird, because I feel like in the grand scheme of things, what we’re doing is not even that much,” she added. “It breaks my heart that even just this little bit has people acting like, ‘Oh my god, at least someone cares.’”
‘I don’t think I could really live with myself if I didn’t at least try to do something’
Cao’s passion for this work, love for the CID and respect for Chin’s legacy are evident in the way she speaks about IDEC. Similarly to Chin, her motivation for volunteering is a calling to help her community.
“I think the world is just such a deeply cruel place,” Cao said. “I don’t think I could really live with myself if I didn’t at least try to do something.”
That drive is tied closely to her respect for Chin himself, and her frustration that so few people know his story.
“To some of my classmates, I’ll be like, ‘Do you know Donnie?’ And they’ll be like, ‘No, I’ve never heard that,’” she said. “It always just feels disheartening every time, because I’ll give the abridged version of Donnie’s story and the responses I get are really varying, and honestly, just disrespectful sometimes. Like, I just shared the story of someone who’s very important to me, a legacy about a guy who tried to save people’s lives in a disenfranchised district, and something I come out here all the time and try to keep fighting for, and the responses I get are like, ‘Oh, cool.’”
To Cao, Chin’s story is part of the larger history of Asian American activism that’s widely gone untold, not just in Seattle but across the country.
“Asian American identity, it was founded as a specifically political identity alongside civil rights movements, like the Chicano movement and the Black Panther movement,” Cao said. “I think Donnie embodied that in a lot of ways. I would want that legacy to be more well known and understood, because Asian American involvement in civil rights movements is not taught anywhere in schools. I had no idea about it growing up.”
That history is what keeps Cao returning to the CID.
“In this neighborhood, [there’s a] very rich history of activism, civil rights. People like Donnie, for example, whose values meant something to them,” Cao said. “That means a lot to me, and I think fighting for that is something worth fighting for.”
For Cao and her fellow volunteers, carrying Chin’s legacy forward isn’t about replacing him, she said — it’s about making sure someone is still doing the work.
“We’re just gonna try to do our best and hopefully other people pick up the baton where it’s needed.”
