“The chances are even better that your emergency call will be answered by a police or fire vehicle doing double duty instead of an adequately equipped ambulance and a paramedic trained in ‘first responder’ care.”(There were some earlier uses of “first response”, though not “first responder”, in this sense. They included an article in "The Daly Sentinel" (Grand Junction, CO) in March 1972, and another about the formation of a First Response Group composed of volunteers in the "Burlington" (VT) "Free Press" in April 1973.)