Renard “Storm” Haynes had no rulebook on how to fight COVID-19 despite being the first line of defense, before doctors and nurses. In Thrown To The Wolves, the NYC EMT reflects on his career, fighting the pandemic from the front lines, and coming to the realization that essential was just another way of saying sacrificial.

Directors Statement

At the age of 19, Renard “Storm” Haynes began his career as an EMT. After rescuing a drowning child at the beach, he felt the power of being able to help others, and in that moment he knew that he had found his calling. He was here to be a helper.

Fast forward to 2020, Haynes finds himself on the front lines of the Covid-19 pandemic in NYC, waging war against the virus under incredibly dangerous conditions. Filmmaker duo and native New Yorkers Michael Kuhn and Niles Roth wanted to tell Haynes’ story to bring focus to the personal experience of a single EMT, who rarely get the spotlight. Even as frontline workers were being heralded as heroes, too often their individual stories didn’t get told. Behind each story is a person, a life, impacted and forever changed. In the case of Hayes, his story is the experience of a helper tasked with fighting the invisible impossible, his life on the line every time he took on a patient. A helper who was “Thrown to the Wolves.”