(Pictured above: Instructors Marguerite (L) and Mike Haaga (R) at the head of their EMT class, with Briana Lucarelli on the computer screen between them)

With the gradual reopening of Connecticut, the Killingworth Ambulance Association has resumed EMT classes at its Route 81 headquarters. But while the course material hasn’t changed, the participants have.

Instructors Mike and Marguerite Haaga wear protective face masks. So do the students in attendance. And social distancing is emphasized. In fact, it’s enforced so strictly that one student isn’t even in the building.

She sits 2,500 miles away.

That would be Briana Lucarelli, 30, who grew up in Deep River, graduated from UConn and takes the class via Zoom from a ranger station in Powell, Id. Like the eight other students involved, Lucarelli began the EMT course in January, driving to Killingworth on Monday and Thursday nights, with occasional Saturdays mixed in.

But then the COVID-19 pandemic happened, and everything changed.

Classes ended at the KAA site in March. Instruction began via Zoom. And Lucarelli departed Connecticut, driving her 1995 Toyota Camry to Idaho, where she works half the year as a firefighter with the U.S. Forest Service – a seasonal job she began in 2019.

Her car has 222,000 miles on it. Lucarelli has almost as many in her post-college travels.

Though she majored in art (photography) at Storrs, with a minor in sociology, her interests since leaving school have veered in far-flung directions. Like Wyoming. And Utah. Colorado. Texas. Even New Zealand, where she spent five months hiking 1,900 miles.

“My heart was more in outdoor work after college,” Lucarelli said. “I think I kinda got burned out on art a bit. And after college I had more time.”

So she took advantage of it. She applied for a job at Yellowstone National Park and got it, working six months in the outdoor recreational field. Then she moved to Utah where she worked two months at a ski resort. From there, it was down to Texas and two-and-half-years with the Texas Conservation Corps.

After that, it was six months in Colorado. Then, five months in New Zealand where she and friends hiked the Te Araroa trail spanning the north and south islands.

“Toward the end of college,” she said, “I realized this is what I wanted to do. My idea was to get out and see the country, and the best way to do that was to take a job there rather than take a vacation there and get to know it as a tourist.

“It’s really simple. I just pack up my car – all my belongings can fit in it – and I drive somewhere. It’s really comforting. Because all my jobs are spring, summer and fall, the winter is really my off time.”

For that reason, this winter she tried something different. She returned to Connecticut.

“I’d been away long enough,” she said, “and I just felt it was time to spend a winter season home … just for family.”

Not surprisingly, she couldn’t sit still. Hearing about the EMT course in Killingworth, she enrolled in January and the rest you know … except, perhaps, why she wants to become a first responder.

“I always thought I’d be good at it,” she said. “It’s something I always wanted to. In the back of my head I wanted to further my medical education by furthering my skills.”

And that’s precisely what’s happening. On a recent Thursday night, Lucarelli was there on Mike Haaga’s 13-inch Dell laptop that rested on a table at the head of the class. She wore headphones. She did not wear a mask. In front of her were seven classmates — four in one row, three in the other. To either side were the Haagas, each asking students if they needed clarifications for a 150-question practice quiz they’d taken.

Lucarelli did. In fact, she needed a litany of them.

“I was wondering about number 10,” she said.

Question: You are on the scene of a 22-year-old female patient who is unresponsive. The patient’s mother states that she is deathly allergic to peanuts and accidentally ate stir fry cooked in peanut oil. The patient is unresponsive, with agonal respirations at six per minute. You insert an oral airway and administer oxygen at 15 liters per minute by bag-valve mask. You notice that it is difficult to bag the patient. Your partner listens to lung sounds and states they are very diminished in the upper fields and absent in the lower fields. What is the best action?

“Well, I think it’s D,” said Lucarelli. “But I’m not sure if that’s correct.”

It was.

Answer: D) Request orders from medical control to administer epinephrine.

“Briana, you have more?” Mike Haaga asked.

She did, though she said she was having trouble with the audio. So Haaga turned off a fan in a corner of the room, turned up the volume on his laptop and swerved the computer to face him.

“That better?” he asked.

“Not really,” she said.

At that point Haaga discovered the source of the problem: His mic was off. So he made the adjustment, Lucarelli was satisfied and the class resumed. Consider it a minor glitch. Lucarelli once lost contact six times during a class but reconnected and got through that, too.

“I’m grateful to have the opportunity to do Zoom,” she said later. ”Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to finish the class.”

When all questions were answered – and there were over 25 – the Haagas divided the class, with Mike taking four students downstairs to an ambulance bay, while Marguerite kept the others – including Lucarelli – in the upstairs classroom for hands-on demonstrations like CPR and AEDs.

“Briana can go anywhere,” one student told me. “Once, we put her in an ambulance.”

Wait. What?

“We were teaching students how to use the stretcher on an ambulance,” said Mike Haaga. “What we do is put one student on it and have another load it so you can find out what it feels like. That’s when one of the students said, ‘Let’s load Briana.’ So we put the laptop on a stretcher, and someone loaded her in. Everybody was laughing.”

Like the rest of the class, Lucarelli will take a written test on June 22. Unlike the rest of the class, she won’t be able to perform the practical – or hands-on — exam until returning home in the fall. Then comes a national final, taken at her convenience.

What a long, strange trip it will have been.

“Part of the reason I’m interested in becoming an EMT is that I can’t do physical-labor jobs forever,” Lucarelli said. “So I wanted to have another life skill, either for my career or to enhance the job I’m doing. Helping others and leading others just makes me feel good. It gives me a purpose in life, and being an EMT is just another example of that.

“But I really have to give props to Mike and Marguerite. They are fantastic teachers, and they’re part of the reason why the class is going so well. They really care about the students learning information. They have a lot of experience and hand down that knowledge easily. If I had taken this in college that might not have been the case – which is one reason I’m so committed to it. I’m really lucky to be doing this with the KAA.”

(L-R: James and Amanda Brackett, with sons J. P. and Zion far right)

Few children remember their fourth birthdays, but one Killingworth boy should have no trouble.

And if he forgets? No problem. His parents will be there to remind him.

Introducing James and Amanda Brackett, Killingworth residents fostering a child they’re trying to adopt. His name is Zion, and – thanks to James and Amanda — he celebrated his fourth birthday Wednesday morning in a brief and extraordinary manner.

With a parade.

Zion was the guest of honor as a caravan of trucks, police cars, unmarked vehicles and one ambulance drove by his Chittenden Road home. Lights flashed. Sirens blared. And Zion, cradled in the arms of Amanda Brackett, waved.

“It was awesome,” Amanda said. “He likes lights and sirens. And big trucks.”

The display is the latest in a string of community exercises demonstrating that, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, there is no shortage of kindness in Killingworth. For the past two months numerous persons within the town donated money, food, masks, protective equipment and, most important, their time to help others.

On this occasion it was the Killingworth Volunteer Fire Company that provided three vehicles, including a rescue truck; the Connecticut State Police that drove two cars and the Killingworth Ambulance Association that sent – what else? — its ambulance. Together they gave a child and his family a birthday present neither will forget.

“It was important for them,” said the KAA’s Lisa Anderson, who drove the association’s vehicle and was joined by EMT and board member Mary Robbenhaar-Fretz (both pictured left), “because it’s been a long year of growth for him, and they (his adoptive parents) wanted to do something special.”

So they did.

The idea began with Amanda Brackett, who heard of drive-by celebrations and wondered if she could get something similar for Zion. So she contacted Anderson, who is a friend, and asked her if an ambulance could be driven past her home. She not only agreed but reached out to the Fire Company to gauge its interest … and the next thing you know there’s a parade of vehicles on Chittenden.

And one happy child.

It’s the second time this month the KAA has done something like this. Two weeks ago it joined the KVFC for a neighborhood parade of vehicles that included drive-by thanks to the Rustic Barn and LaForesta, as well as another child’s birthday celebration.

“I would like to thank Chief (Richard) Bauer at the Fire Company and his crew for helping make the day special for Zion,” said Anderson. “These are a new type of requests we’re seeing, due to not being able to have ‘normal’ birthday celebrations. A lot of towns are doing it, and, yes, I would say it’s COVID- related. Parents are trying to make a special day special in these times.”

The Bracketts just succeeded.

(IMPORTANT: Applications are available within the text of this story)

Attention, high-school seniors from Killingworth: The deadline to apply for this year’s Killingworth Ambulance Association scholarships is Friday, May 15. So there’s still time to act.

There’s just not much of it.

Originally, the KAA scheduled the deadline for mid-April, which was the date in the past. But it postponed it one month to accomodate for the disruption created within our schools by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now that deadline is like high-school graduation: It’s approaching rapidly.

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-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.

NOTE: In addition to moving the deadline for applications, the KAA also changed the procedure 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 submit them by computer to the KAA.

Instructions are included within the attached application found here:

(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.”

When people call the Killingworth Ambulance Association they need help, often for medical emergencies. But that’s not what happened when Heidi Giaccone contacted an EMT this week. Instead of asking for assistance, she offered it.

Unusual? Keep reading.

A Killingworth resident the past 16 years, Giaccone was poking around the basement of her home one day when she found 10 R95 respirator masks sitting on a shelf in unopened boxes. Her husband had purchased them once for a Habitat for Humanity project in Connecticut, and while Giaccone knew that neither she nor her family of four would use them she knew of someone who could.

So she reached out to the Ambulance Association.

“The basement is really my husband’s domain,” said Giaccone, who works as a senior recruiter for Medtronic. “I happened to be looking for something, but masks have been on my mind. I didn’t know if they were the right kind of medical grade or not, but I was happy to share.”

Turns out they were the right kind. In fact, there is little difference between the R95 and N95 respirators, with both filtering 95 percent of airborne particles. While the N95 mask is more familiar with care-givers treating COVID-19 patients, both are approved by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).

“I’m glad,” said Giaccone. “I just wish we had more.”

So do first responders and hospitals nationwide. There’s an acute shortage of respirators to deal with a surge of confirmed COVID-19 patients, and donations are more than welcome; they’re desperately needed. With cases this week exceeding 1,000 in Connecticut, including three in Killingworth as of Saturday, Giaccone said she knew whom to contact when she found protective masks.

“My Mom lived here for awhile at Jensen’s,” she said, “and we had to use the service of the Ambulance Association a few times to get her to the hospital. I just remember that everyone was so kind.

“I once had to call the ambulance for my daughter, too, when she was three – and again everyone was so nice. They interrupt their days to drop everything and help others. So I wanted to help the people who help others first.”

And she did. She dropped off five boxes of masks – two to a carton – with an EMT on Wednesday, leaving them in a mailbox to ensure social distancing. At the KAA’s monthly meeting that evening – conducted via conference call – she was congratulated for her compassion and thanked for her generosity.

“The KAA is grateful to Ms. Giaccone for her family’s donations of the masks,” said Mike Haaga, the Ambulance Association’s chief of service. “It is imperative to keep our technicians safe and well so they can continue to respond to calls for help in our community. Her donation will go a long way toward that end. As always, the KAA can count on the help of our neighbors.”