The Killingworth Ambulance Association lost more than a trusted business associate with the recent passing of Dorothy Wright. It lost a friend.

But it wasn’t alone. The town of Killingworth lost an extraordinary resident, too.

When Wright died earlier this month, she left behind a litany of townspeople with memories of a remarkable woman who treasured family and friends and loved to entertain, cook, garden, travel and work.

Yes, work.

“She was a pioneering business woman,” said family friend John Byrne, Wright’s neighbor.

Almost from the moment she and her late husband, Harold, moved to Killingworth in 1963, Dorothy Wright was involved in anything to do with business. She was a self-starter who became a company treasurer. She was a chief financial officer for two companies. She negotiated contracts. She balanced books. She had her own financial services firm where she handled payrolls and company tax sheets. And she helped found the Killingworth Chamber of Commerce.

“She was one of the original treasurers,” said Tim Gannon, who co-founded the Chamber with Wright three decades ago. “She kept a tight rein on the budget so that everything was in line where it was needed. She kept everything on a steady course.”

She served a similar function with the KAA, where she was a paid contractor who oversaw the organization’s payroll. Nobody is sure how long she was there. KAA treasurer Leota Lanoue estimated it was at least 15 years but said it could have been closer to 20. Whatever it was, she said, Wright was the only one who served that role.

Ever.

“She never wanted to retire,” said her daughter, Lynn Wright.

But serving the community was only one of many facets of Dorothy Wright’s life. Family and friends were important to her, with Dorothy – or “Dottie,” as she was called – hosting neighborhood get-togethers. A mother of two who raised a daughter (Lynn) and son (Eliot), Wright was what Byrne called “a five-star chef who was never afraid to try anything new” and known for throwing lavish dinner parties and “epic” Christmas gatherings.

“She made the most delicious meals ever,” said her daughter. “We’d call them ‘Dorothy Wright meals.’ “

When she went out, it was to tend to her whimsical gardens or dine at local restaurants like Café Allegre, Rocky’s Aqua and La Foresta. Gardening was a passion, and it fascinated her. She worked at it tirelessly and achieved such dramatic results that Byrne called her “a master gardener,” never afraid to experiment with plantings.

“You’d look to the left, then look to the right,” he said, “and she had something different at every spot.”

When she ventured outside the area, Dorothy Wright went big. She and her husband enjoyed traveling the world, visiting an estimated 25 countries – with France, Turkey, Russia, Spain and Greece among their stops. They even rode the Orient Express.

“She was a strong, independent woman who lived life to the fullest,” said Lynn Wright. “She wanted to go see people, talk to people and have interesting things to do. She never was one to sit. She always wanted to be active.”

Wright was valued by the KAA, where she was hired after one of its board members recommended her. She was in charge of everything from distributing payroll checks to figuring taxes to circulating 1099 forms to outsiders who performed services for the KAA. And she was so efficient that, once hired, she was never replaced.

“She was a pleasure to work with,” said chief of service Mike Haaga, “and a wonderful woman.”

The feeling must have been mutual.  Dorothy Wright and her family requested that, in lieu of flowers, all memorial donations in her name be made to the Killingworth Ambulance Association.

“We chose it,” said Eliot Wright, “because it should be Killingworth based, and we couldn’t think of a better organization that she cared about. It was connected to her work, so it just seemed fitting.”

As it has in past years, the Killingworth Ambulance Association will offer scholarships this spring to graduating seniors enrolled in private or public high schools.

Candidates must be residents of Killingworth and plan on continuing their education at a two-or-four-year academic institution. They should also meet the follow criteria: 1) Major in the medical, emergency services (fire, police, etc.) or other allied fields; 2) engage in community service and 3) maintain a GPA of 3.0 or higher in their high-school careers.

Applications are available at Haddam-Killingworth, Mercy and Xavier High Schools and can be found in the guidance departments. Or they can be found here by clicking on the highlighted word.

Completed applications must be postmarked no later than Friday, April 23, with certificates of scholarships awarded in June.

The KAA has awarded 15 scholarships over the past four years, including eight in the last two. Haddam-Killingworth High School graduates Olivia Herrmann and Victoria DeLuca were the 2020 recipients.

Herrmann attends Clemson University and DeLuca is a student at Southern Connecticut State University. The two continued a recent run of young women as recipients, with all eight scholarships the past two years awarded to females.

For more information please contact the KAA at (860) 663-2450.

The Killingworth Ambulance Association last year answered more than one emergency call per day, with the pattern of responses slightly different from those in 2019.

According to information compiled by the association, EMTs were dispatched on 370 calls in 2020, a slight increase over the 355 the year before. The most prevalent response was for victims of falls, with the numbers consistent over the two years.

Where there were 71 last year there were 75 in 2019.

But there were changes after that, with breathing problems the most notable. They ranked fifth in 2019, comprising 6.2 percent of all calls, but jumped to second a year later – with 36 calls comprising 9.6 percent of the total.

The explanation? Simple. The COVID-19 pandemic. It surged through the country in March and didn’t recede as the year wore on, with the KAA responding to more persons complaining of breathing problems the second half of 2020.

But that’s not all. What follows are the top five calls for 2019-20, with percentages of the totals in parentheses:

• Falls – 71 (19.2)
• Breathing problems – 36 (9.7)
• Sick person – 35 (9.5)
• Not entered – 32 (8.6)
• Traffic accident – 25 (6.8)

Now compare that to the five leading calls in 2019 …

• Fall victims – 75 (21.1)
• Traffic accident – 35 (9.9)
• Sick person – 35 (9.9)
• Not entered – 31 (8.7)
• Breathing problems – 22 (6.2)

Of note are traffic accidents. They were down to 25 in 2020 from the prior year, or 6.8 percent of the calls, and that is not hard to explain, either. With the COVID pandemic forcing state and local shutdowns, persons traveled less frequently. Hence, accidents declined.

“I’m not so interested in the different numbers,” said the KAA’s chief of service Mike Haaga, “as I am in how many responses we have, how long it takes us to get there and how long it takes to get off the scene to the hospital.”

Of the other numbers, the most intriguing were calls made for persons who were unconscious or who had fainted. It dropped by over 50 percent. Where there were 11 in 2019, there were five a year later. Of equal interest is the drop in PEER (Police Emergency Evaluation Request) from one year to the other. There were nine in 2019 and four in 2020.

“The calls in the early months of the pandemic were down from last year,” said KAA president Dan O’Sullivan, “as people were cautious about going to the hospital. However, as the year went on, calls increased a fair amount over last year, with the total modestly higher.”

The KAA figures are recorded annually, with calls recorded electronically on patient care reports by EMTs on the scene.

After gaining clearance last week to receive COVID-19 vaccinations, at least 13 EMTs with the Killingworth Ambulance Association have been inoculated — with others scheduled to undergo treatment soon.

“Each tech was contacted individually to schedule an appointment,” said Mike Haaga, the KAA’s chief of service. “I do not get a list of who received one, so I know only of the techs who shared that information with me.”

One of 29 active EMTS with the KAA, Haaga is among the 13 immunized in Connecticut’s Phase 1a program, available to first responders at risk of exposure to COVID-19.

KAA president Dan O’Sullivan is another. He was the association’s first EMT to be vaccinated, treated on Dec. 23, at Middlesex Hospital shortly after local first responders and EMTs were given clearance to be immunized.

“It was completely painless,” he said of the injection. “I didn’t even feel it when it went in.”

Techs receive vaccines through a number of avenues. Some, like O’Sullivan, received them through Middlesex Hospital, which has a connection with Killingworth Ambulance, while others obtained them through hospitals where they work. Still others receive them through a vaccination clinic in Old Saybrook, arranged by the Connecticut River Area Health District and coordinated for the KAA by Killingworth’s Health Director, Amy Scholz.

O’Sullivan said he expects those treated in Phase 1a to receive a second round of injections shortly.  The Pfizer vaccine requires three weeks between inoculations, while the Moderna vaccine requires four.  The type of vaccine varies depending on where techs receive their inoculations.

While the news is encouraging, the KAA will continue to proceed cautiously. All crews responding to calls, for instance, wear protective face masks and gloves as part of their Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Furthermore, EMTs who treat patients with COVID symptoms — or who are within a residence that had a confirmed COVID case – are required to wear gowns, face shields, gloves and N95 masks instead of surgical face masks.

In addition, Valley Shore dispatch screens all incoming 911 calls to determine if there are symptoms related to COVID-19. If that screen is deemed positive, the KAA forbids EMTs in training from boarding the ambulance and requires on-scene first responders to conduct their own screen before approaching patients.

Radios are used to communicate with persons inside a home to those on the outside.

“This is going to be what continues to happen in terms of procedure,” said O’Sullivan. “Even when we’re all vaccinated, we’re not going to change the protocol. We’re all going to have to take precautionary measures to make sure we’re not spreaders of the virus.

“They (the CDC) think vaccinated people won’t spread the virus, but they don’t yet have proof. So we’re going to have to keep doing what we’re doing until the CDC says the vaccination does protect against a spread or the vaccination program is finished.”

The Killingworth Ambulance Association will hold another in its series of “Stop the Bleed” classes on Saturday, Nov. 14, at its Route 81 headquarters. The course, which is free to the public, begins at 11 a.m. and lasts approximately one hour.

Persons ages 12 and older are invited to attend, with all required to wear protective face masks.

Important: Interested persons are also asked to complete an RSVP form that can be found here (http://www.killingworthambulance.org/news-events/rsvp/) or under the “Classes” pull-down menu at the top of the KAA home page.

“Stop the Bleed” is a nationwide awareness campaign that was launched in 2015 by the White House and Department of Homeland Security. It is designed to empower bystanders with training to deal with traumatic events and emergency bleeding situations before emergency help arrives.

The KAA first offered “Stop the Bleed” classes in July, 2017, making Killingworth the first Connecticut town to have its citizens certified. Since that time it has conducted 21 classes and had “Stop the Bleed” stations placed at the Killingworth Town Hall and Public Library.

For more information, contact the Killingworth Ambulance Association at (860) 663-2450.

(Picture above, left to right: Dan Siegel, Lisa Anderson and Mark Clifton)

New year. Same story.

When the Killingworth Ambulance Association last weekend honored its top responders for 2019-20 the results sounded familiar. That’s because they were. The three EMTs who last year took the most calls were the same three EMTs honored Sunday at the KAA’s annual banquet.

Lisa Anderson, Dan Siegel and Mark Clifton, come on down.

Anderson answered the most calls, responding to 207 of the 327 — or 63.3 percent. Siegel was second at 167 and Clifton third with 83. The same three were honored a year ago, with Siegel finishing first. Ironically, he took 11 fewer calls then (156) than he did in 2019-20.

Anderson was second and Clifton third a year ago.

“These three EMTs are the cornerstone of the KAA’s service to the town,” said KAA president Dan O’Sullivan. “To be a leader year after year shows tremendous dedication, commitment to the community and sacrifice of personal time.

“Lisa Anderson having over 200 calls is an amazing number. The dedication of these leaders is particularly noteworthy this year with the added risk of the pandemic. I encourage anyone who knows them to reach out to them and thank them.”

Anderson’s 207 calls are so “amazing,” as O’Sullivan put it, that during the KAA’s monthly board meeting Wednesday it was suggested they might be a record for a Killingworth EMT. While that could not be confirmed, board members agreed the figure is the most in recent memory.

Anderson has been a Killingworth EMT for five years and one of its top three responders for all but one.

“I do this,” she said, “because I love doing it.”

In addition to Anderson, Siegel and Clifton, the KAA honored retiring EMT Bruce Bowman. Bowman, a Killingworth Ambulance Association EMT the past 10 years and one of its top three responders in 2018, is moving with wife Liz to Tennessee.

Clifton presented him with a toy ambulance as part of the ceremony.

“I thought it was great,” said Bowman. “We’ll take it with us to Tennessee.”

The Killingworth Ambulance Association will hold its first “Stop the Bleed” class of 2020 on Saturday, Sept. 12, at the KAA’s Route 81 headquarters. The course begins at 11 a.m., and is free and open to persons ages 12 years and older.

Those who attend are required to wear protective face masks.

“Stop the Bleed” is a nationwide awareness campaign that was launched in 2015 by the White House and Department of Homeland Security (https://www.stopthebleed.org/). It is designed to empower bystanders with the training to deal with traumatic events and emergency bleeding situations before emergency help arrives.

Its value was underscored last October at Vinal Tech in Middletown when a state trooper responding to an accident implemented a “Stop the Bleed” kit to treat what was called “a catastrophic injury” involving profuse bleeding.

Officials later said the trooper’s quick thinking may have saved the victim’s life.

The KAA first offered “Stop the Bleed” classes in July, 2017, making Killingworth the first Connecticut town to have its citizens certified. Since that time it has conducted 20 classes and had “Stop the Bleed” stations placed at the Killingworth Town Hall and Public Library.

For more information, contact the Killingworth Ambulance Association at (860) 663-2450.

(Pictured above: Olivia Herrmann, one of two winners of the 2020 KAA scholarships)

Haddam-Killingworth High-School graduates Olivia Herrmann and Victoria DeLuca are this year’s recipients of the Killingworth Ambulance Association scholarships.

The awards are granted annually to Killingworth residents who are graduating high-school seniors planning on continuing their educations at two-or-four-year schools and who maintained GPAs of 3.0 or higher, performed community service and intend to pursue careers in the medical, emergency services (fire, police, etc.) or other allied fields.

Herrmann and DeLuca checked all those boxes, with each intending to major in nursing … and no surprise there. Six of the past eight KAA scholarship recipients chose nursing as their fields of study.

“When picking my major,” said Herrmann, “I was deciding on nursing or biomedical engineering. I chose to pursue an education in nursing because I have a lot of close family members who were nurses, and that is something I wanted to emulate.”

DeLuca said she hopes to become a registered nurse before returning to school to pursue a doctorate in nursing.

“Becoming a nurse is the most rewarding job I can think of,” she said. “Whenever I was sick as a child and had to go to the hospital I always remembered how compassionate the nurses were to me with whatever I needed.”

Here’s a quick look at this year’s winners:

OLIVIA HERRMANN – Ranked eighth in the HKHS senior class, Herrmann was a member of the school’s field hockey and lacrosse teams. Among her 51 hours of community service, she volunteered for the annual Hartford Kids’ Holiday Service, served as a coach for the HK Youth Lacrosse Girls’ Instructional team and was a referee for the youth lacrosse program. She will attend Clemson University and said she hopes to continue her education by gaining a graduate degree in nursing.

VICTORIA DeLUCA – She completed 175 hours of community service, including roles as a four-year brand ambassador for the high school and student teacher at the Dance Corner in Killingworth for four years. DeLuca will attend Southern Connecticut State University and hopes to focus her studies on pediatrics. “As long as I am helping people,” she said, “that’s all that matters.”

Herrmann and DeLuca continue a run of young women as KAA scholarship recipients. Over the past two years, the KAA has awarded eight scholarships — including six last year — and all have been to females.

(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.”