San Mateo County Medical Reserve Corps lays out coastal response plan and seeks volunteers

Susie Castro, a staff member with emergency medical services, told the Mid Coast Community Council that the Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) is "a national group of volunteers organized locally to improve health and safety in our communities." She said the MRC is part of a tiered response system that includes federal and state partners and the county emergency medical services and that the unit deploys only when officially activated: "We do not self-deploy."

The presentation, delivered by Castro and other MRC staff, described the group's mission to strengthen public-health surge capacity during declared emergencies, and the training, background checks and liability protections volunteers receive. Castro said volunteers are sworn as disaster-service workers and undergo both DOJ/FBI checks and license verifications so clinicians touching patients are screened. "All our volunteers are sworn in as disaster service worker volunteers, which gets them certain liability protections as well as workers comp benefits," a presenter said.

MRC staff said the program is concentrating efforts on the coastside under a Measure K grant to build a local pool of trained volunteers. They reported measurable growth in enrollment: "In January of 2025, we had 10 members in the MRC. We're now up to about 50 members," one presenter said, and added that more swearing-ins and fingerprinting are pending. The group outlined a hybrid outreach model for the coast and noted a coast emergency-operations trailer stationed at the Half Moon Bay city lot holds sheltering equipment, a generator and other supplies that can support an alternate care site.

Council members asked about the MRC's relationship to local community emergency response teams (CERT) and search-and-rescue groups. Presenters said many MRC volunteers are also CERT/SER members and that coordination is built into deployment procedures: "We wait and then we get called ... and then we can put on the MRC vest," a staffer said, describing how neighborhood-level volunteers and formal MRC deployments can work together.

Staff described participation expectations: a bi-monthly meeting schedule, quarterly 4–6 hour trainings, and optional deployments (volunteers can state how far they are willing to travel). They emphasized that non-clinical volunteers are also needed for logistics, registration, triage support and communications. The presenters invited residents to join via a QR sign-up and said the next coast meeting would be held on Aug. 5 as a hybrid session at the Half Moon Bay Emergency Operations Center.

The Council praised the briefing and several members and residents said they would help spread the word about recruitment, noting the coastside's geographic isolation during disasters and the value of locally based medical surge capacity. The MRC team asked for help recruiting clinicians, pediatric specialists and mental-health professionals and reiterated that background checks and swearing-in are part of onboarding.

Next steps: residents who want to join were asked to use the QR code the presenters provided to sign up for training and membership; the MRC plans additional outreach events and training exercises this summer.