At center, Air Force Master Sgt. Jim Johnston, who is trained as a rescue jumper in the military, evaluates a woman on a city street along with Tucson Fire paramedics Dan Wallace, left, and Donnie Webb.

Chris Richards / Arizona Daily Star

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In the bedroom of a dingy apartment on Tucson's South Side, Air Force Master Sgt. Jim Johnston snapped on a pair of latex gloves and gently probed the rib cage of a 40-year-old woman weeping with pain.

She'd been sick for days. Her fever was 104. Her only medicine: Nyquil.

"Where does it hurt?," Johnston asked. "My chest," the woman panted, crying out as a coughing spasm overtook her.

An hour later, Johnston is on another city street, trying to make sense of a babbling 21-year-old woman who seems strung out on drugs. She is wandering curbside in bedroom slippers, wondering where her four small children are.

This is not the sort of thing Johnston normally encounters as an Air Force pararescuer, a job that involves saving downed combat pilots or aiding civilian disaster victims. Nowadays, he's on a different front line: in Tucson neighborhoods populated by addicts, alcoholics, frail elderly or poor folks without medical insurance.

Johnston is one of a dozen or so airmen from around the country responding to calls with Tucson Fire Department paramedics in order to sharpen their emergency-response skills.

The training, which began last month, is being done through Pima Community College. The Tucson school is the only one in the nation offering such classes to Air Force rescue personnel, said Chief Master Sgt. Gary Emery, a spokesman for Air Force Special Operations Command, which oversees the military rescuers.

The college won a $60,000 contract through Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, and it expects to train about two dozen airmen this year. College officials say the pilot project could be extended if all goes well.

Those involved say it's going very well so far.

"The best thing about working with the Fire Department is that you get exposure working on all types of patients," said Johnston, 43, an Air Force reservist from Florida, temporarily assigned to D-M for the three-month course.

"In the military you're mainly working on young, healthy people," said Johnston, who has served in Iraq and Afghanistan three times since 2003.

"Here you're working on older people, diabetics or alcoholics. It's tougher to work on these older, sicker folks."

Such encounters make Air Force personnel more well-rounded as emergency responders, officials said. And that's a good thing, since military duty sometimes calls them into unusual situations.

During Hurricane Rita last fall, for example, Johnston was part of an Air Force rescue team that helped evacuate a nursing home.

Tucson Fire has for years done similiar training runs with Border Patrol rescuers and other Southern Arizona emergency personnel. But this is the first time Air Force rescuers have taken part.

Students like Johnston ride along on Fire Department rescue trucks two to three times a week during the training, said Tucson Fire spokesman Capt. Paul McDonough.

He said the program is just as valuable to local paramedics as it is to the Air Force.

"The experience military personnel gain here will benefit them when they are deployed," said McDonough. "And it helps us, too, because they've seen certain things in combat and can tell us about techniques they've used."

"It's one of those situations where both sides win."