45, Male and Now a Nurse

BALTIMORE’S gritty Levindale section is a world apart from Ponce Inlet, Fla., the upscale barrier island where Rich Van Rensselaer owned a boutique liquor store and coffee shop before becoming a trauma nurse. If you had asked Mr. Van Rensselaer in 2004 if he thought he would trade in life in Margaritaville for scenes from “The Wire” — treating gunshot wounds, drug overdoses and unmanaged diabetes in one of the city’s busiest emergency rooms — he might have assumed you had been to one too many of his wine-tasting events.

“Never in a million years,” he says, laughing, as he walks the halls of Sinai Hospital, showing off his workplace.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/education/edlife/07conted-t.html?_r=2