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.”

(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.”