(Pictured above: KAA vice president and EMT Marguerite Haaga with one of 50 face shields)

A smart man once said, “It’s kindness that helps people cope with crisis.” Seldom have those words resonated as they do here and now.

Random acts of kindness have been so evident in and around Killingworth during the COVID-19 lockdown that they’re no longer random. They’re frequent, and they’re everywhere … from Annette Sachs Cook handing out free face masks at the waste transfer station … to La Foresta Restaurant donating food to 600 persons at the Beechwood retirement community … to the posting of hand-made “Thank You” signs throughout the area.

Now comes this.

For the fifth time in the last five weeks, the Killingworth Ambulance Association has been the recipient of a gracious – and necessary — donation from a town resident. Larry Anderson, a PMO manager within the Research, Development and Engineering division of inLine Plastics, this week gave the association 50 clear plastic face shields to help with its supply of PPE during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Anderson wasn’t asked, nor was he pushed. He did it because … well, let him explain.

“When we saw the COVID virus hitting, a number of us (at inLine) got frustrated and said, ‘What can we do to help?’ “ he said. “We wanted to do our part. We didn’t want to sit here helplessly. We wanted to do something.”

So they did.

Tom Orkisz, owner of inLine Plastics, had read an article detailing how NYU developed a design for open-source face shields to protect front-line healthcare workers, and he pointed Anderson and his co-workers in that direction. After research and contact with companies involved in the production of shields, they decided to give it a try.

Only with one caveat.

“We wanted to do it on a donation basis,” Anderson said. “It’s all done on personal time.”

That’s important to note. Where some companies retooled their businesses to make and market plastic shields, inLine has not.  The company is a successful manufacturer of safe, hygienic and leak-proof food packaging that includes the Safe-T-Fresh line, and it hasn’t shifted its emphasis during the COVID-19 alert.

It has, however, expanded it.

“We’re not trying to develop a new product line,” said Anderson. “This is on a pure donation basis.”

Assembly is done by volunteers, with employees taking kits home for the weekend, then returning Monday with finished products. Because a shield can take a minute to construct, Anderson said, it’s not unusual for an individual to return with “a couple hundred.”

When the process began, inLine volunteers were urged to contact healthcare groups or first responders within their geographic locales to see if they were interested. So Anderson reached out to the KAA and asked.

It was.

The shields, part of what Anderson estimated as 1,500-2,000 distributed by inLine, were picked up earlier this week and included a note that read, “Thanks to you and all the heroes on the front lines of COVID-19. This is a difficult time and we know that you and your team are working diligently to keep us safe.”

But the KAA is hardly alone. Hospitals in Bridgeport, Norwalk, UConn and Yale have been contacted. EMS groups throughout the state have been, too, with Anderson saying he plans to drop off 100 shields with the Madison Fire Department. He would’ve done the same with Killingworth, he said, but, like others, he didn’t know the Volunteer Fire Company and Ambulance Association were separate entities.

“We will happily make 10,000 or 20,000 more for others if there’s the demand,” he said. “We’re just trying to figure out where our market is for these donations.”

They just did. And the KAA is as grateful as it was when it received a donation last week … and the week before that … and the week before that … and …

“The donations ae heartwarming,” said Dan O’Sullivan, president of the KAA. “Beyond the ones that protect us and make us safer, they tell us we are not alone … that we are all in this together. I’m amazed at the generosity and creativity of people finding ways they can help.”

(Pictured above, L-R:  The KAA’s Mike Haaga and Francesco Lulaj, owner of La Foresta)

The Killingworth Ambulance Association is used to serving the community. It is not used to the community serving the KAA. But that’s exactly what happened Thursday afternoon.

Literally.

Francesco Lulaj, owner of La Foresta Restaurant, showed up at the ambulance association’s headquarters to serve EMTs with 30 bags of donated dinners prepared and cooked earlier that day. Each bag contained two plastic dishes with meals straight off the La Foresta menu and fresh out of its kitchen.

There was home-cooked manicotti, with ricotta cheese and tomato sauce. There were home-made meatballs. And there was sea bass Milanese, with capers and lemon sauce sitting on a bed of yellow rice. In short, there was enough in each bag to feed two or three customers.

Only these meals didn’t come with a bill. They came with an expression of gratitude.

“You guys donate your time and expertise,” Lulaj said, taking a break from handing out meals with Mike Haaga, the KAA’s chief of service. “You’re amazing. This is just a small thing I’m doing. What you go through is above and beyond.”

Lulaj’s contribution is no small thing. The dinners took an estimated eight hours from start to finish and were prepared without 26 of La Foresta’s employees, laid off because of the COVID-19 alert. In their place, Lulaj called on three persons to assist, including his chef.

Nor was Lulaj’s contribution unusual. The previous week he dropped off 65 bags of meals to feed the Killingworth Volunteer Fire Company. And the week before that, he went door-to-door in the Beechwood retirement community, delivering food to 600 people. The dinners took three to four days to prepare and another four hours to deliver.

“It’s not about the food,” he said. “It’s a gesture through human contact. It’s something for somebody who’s really in need.”

Then he paused.

“And next week,” he promised, “we’re going to be someplace else.”

So what gives? No, it’s more like who gives. Killingworth’s residents, that’s who. Last weekend, it was Andrea Freibauer of Andie’s Cookies dropping off two-to-three pounds of cookies with the KAA. The week before, it was an anonymous donor delivering 250 protective face masks. And in late March it was Heidi Giaccone donating 10 R-95 masks she found in her family’s basement.

Now this.

“As a community,” said Lulaj, who last week donated 150 face masks to the KVFC, “we should pay attention to people who donate their time. I donate food. Somebody else donates money. It’s all OK. Your time is more valuable than anything else, yet that’s what (the KAA) does.. You stay away from your family, wake up in the middle of the night – maybe 1 or 2 in the morning — and drive sick people to the hospital. I am very appreciative of what you do for our town.”

Lulaj said he wanted to demonstrate that appreciation and, naturally, thought of donating food. In six years of operating La Foresta in Killingworth, he provided the local fire company with meals at regular intervals, a practice he began when the KVFC alleviated his concerns about a potential fire hazard shortly after the restaurant’s opening.

But he’d never reached out to the KAA. Until this week.

““Honestly,” Lulaj said, “I thought they were the same people. It never came to my mind that they were different.”

It’s a common misperception. When he realized his mistake, he telephoned Haaga Wednesday to make amends — asking if he could donate meals the following afternoon. When Haaga jumped at the offer, Lulaj asked how many dinners he would like. Haaga said 25. Lulaj dropped off 30.

“This is a great community,” Haaga said, shaking his head. “Everybody takes care of everybody.”

But the KAA is supposed to take care of everybody because … well, because that’s what it does. The community isn’t supposed to take care of the KAA. Yet that’s what it’s doing amid the COVID-19 pandemic, with random acts of kindness the new normal.

Lulaj is the latest example.

“People don’t understand how much we are saving by (volunteers) donating their time to take care of us,” he said. “The same thing with the Fire Department. We take it for granted, and that’s not a good thing. We have to show the younger generation that if you volunteer you’re making your community safer and better. That’s how we take care of each other, and this is my way of showing my appreciation for what you do. This comes from the heart.”

When Mike Haaga walked into the Killingworth Ambulance Association after answering an emergency call Sunday afternoon, he smelled something unfamiliar coming from the building’s kitchen. It wasn’t something foul or something burning. No, it was something altogether different.

Something downright appetizing.

“Peanut-butter cookies,” said Haaga, the KAA’s chief of service.

Close. Actually, they were peanut-butter/oatmeal, and they were among five kinds … and two-to-three pounds … of cookies donated to the KAA by local businesswoman Andrea Freibauer, originator and owner of Andie’s Cookies. She dropped them off the previous afternoon with friend and EMT Lisa Ditlevson-Anderson, attaching a note that read: “Thank you for all you do! Stay well and stay safe! Enjoy!”

It was signed by Andrea, Larry and Valleri Freibauer.

“It was an impulse thing,” Andrea Freibauer said later. “It just popped in my head that this would be a great place to go. I was trying to think of someone who would appreciate the cookies and someone who worked on the front lines.”

She came to the right address.

First of all, responders are always on the front lines, and with the COVID-19 alert they’re on them now more than ever. In fact, the KAA this March reported six more calls than over the same period last year. But second, the association’s EMTs not only appreciated the cookies; they devoured them.

“Obviously,” said Haaga, “we’re very appreciative. It was a great gesture. I just thought: How nice of somebody to do this.”

Choosing the KAA, however, was no random act of kindness. Freibauer knows of its work first-hand. EMTs more than once have been called to her home to look after her father, whom she had moved to reside with her and her family.

“He has some health issues,” she said, “so I’m always supportive of the Ambulance Association. They’ve always done a great job of taking care of him.”

Her story is reminiscent of one told recently by Killingworth resident Heidi Giaccone, who donated 10 R-95 face masks she found in her family’s basement. She thought of the KAA, she said, because of her contact with its EMTs while responding to calls to her late mother’s home.

“I just remember that everyone was so kind,” she said. “I wanted to help the people who help others first.”

Two weeks later, Freibauer remembered, too. And she followed.

(Pictured are four of last year’s winners, all from Haddam-Killingworth High School. From L-R, they are : Mikayla Nuhn, Brianna Shipman, Kyra Figuerelli and Emily Jennings.)

In recognition of the disruption to the school year by the COVID-19 alert, the Killingworth Ambulance Association has moved the deadline for its 2020 scholarships from mid-April to mid-May.

Applications had been scheduled to be completed no later than Friday, April 17. That deadline has been moved to Friday, May 15. 

Applications are available to graduating seniors who are residents of Killingworth and enrolled in private or public high schools. To qualify for a scholarship, applicants must plan on attending a continuing-education institution (two or four years) and have been accepted at a school. They also must major in the medical, emergency services (fire, police, etc.) or other allied fields, have performed community service and maintained a GPA of at least 3.0.

Certificates of scholarships will be awarded at the end of the school year. In the past two years, the KAA awarded scholarships to 11 graduating seniors now enrolled in colleges across the country.

In addition to moving the deadline for applications, the KAA also changed the procedure itself to make it more convenient for students. Instead of filling out applications by hand and delivering them to a school’s guidance department, applicants may now complete them on-line and email them electronically to the KAA.

Instructions are attached with the application below. To begin, click here:

(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

With a change in protocol for all patients transported to state hospitals, the Killingworth Ambulance Association will need more protective masks … and on Wednesday it received them. Two-hundred-and-fifty, as a matter of fact, from an unlikely source.

A donor who requested anonymity.

A local health professional dropped off five unopened boxes of surgical face masks, each containing 50 items, and asked that they be delivered to the KAA. With Connecticut in a virtual lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, he said his business had slowed to the point where he wasn’t in immediate need of an abundance of masks.

So he wanted them in the hands of someone who is.

“I’m not seeing patients now,” he said, “and I have enough masks for the time being. You (EMTs with the Ambulance Association) need them because you’re called out every day. I’m just happy to help.”

It’s the second time in the past week the KAA has been the recipient of free protective equipment, with local resident Heidi Giaccone last week donating 10 R95 masks she found in the basement of her home.

The timing of the latest donation comes in the wake of a change in KAA protocol requiring all transported patients and techs to wear masks at all times when entering facilities. That, in turn, followed a directive from Middlesex EMS on Tuesday requiring all patients taken to the hospital or its satellite clinic to wear surgical masks regardless of symptoms or the reason for hospital visits.

The latest change, however, expanded the protocol to patients and EMTs to all facilities. That will require more masks, and the KAA now has them.

The surgical masks donated Wednesday are used on patients who meet the respiratory precaution protocol, whereas techs have been using … and will continue to use … N95 masks. However, now they are also required to wear surgical masks for non-respiratory precaution patients going to any hospital facility.

As sometimes happens, the latest donation came by chance. Keith Lyke, co-owner and pharmacy manager of the Killingworth Family Pharmacy, had been approached by the donor about a week ago, asking if he needed a supply of protective masks. Lyke told him he did not. He had just put in an order, he said, and would receive them soon. However, he promised to reach out to the Killingworth Ambulance Association and Killingworth Volunteer Fire Company to see if they could use them.

He did, and the rest you know.

“It definitely adds a sense of community,” said Lyke. “Everybody is willing to do what they can to help. But an individual who wants no recognition? That’s more than impressive. It’s admirable.”