HANKINS, NY — The dedicated emergency medical service providers staffing the rigs of the Upper Delaware Volunteer Ambulance Corps (VAC) recently celebrated their 50th anniversary of providing life-saving assistance to folks in an area of the river valley about the size of Staten Island.

The corps was founded in January 1969 and was initially stationed at Callicoon Hospital, but in 1991 it relocated to the present site near the Hankins/Kellams bridge. 

The structure was created by an Adopt a Block program and relied on donations to happen. 

As of the new election, starting January 1, 2024, the officers are Captain Kaitlin Duffy (63-01), Lt. Diana Duffy (63-02), Lt. Connor Duffy 63-03) and health and safety officer Tabitha Homenick (63-04), along with president Melanie Rieger, vice-president Shawn Bailey, financial officer Steve Duffy, secretary Kathryn Dristrian and trustee Thomas “Mike” Knack.

“I’ll be captain until the 31st at midnight, and then I hand over the radio and keys to my wife,” said Connor Duffy of the transition at the helm to his wife Kaitlin, in a December 2023 interview.

The outgoing captain explained that his entire family has been involved in emergency medical services (EMS) on his mother’s side of the clan. His grandparents founded the Mamakating First Aid Squad. “We have a long family lineage to the volunteer ambulance and fire services… I was head over heels in it since the first day I could be.”

Connor Duffy’s mother Diana has been involved with local EMS for nearly 40 years. She started as an emergency room nurse, and then “she decided she wanted to get involved with giving something back to the community,” Connor said. Diana joined the Upper Delaware VAC when the Sipple family “were the power players in the agency at that time.”

Of the 24 current members, nine are EMTs, one a certified first responder (CFR) and the rest of the dedicated volunteers serve as administrators, drivers and ambulance attendants.

According to Connor Duffy, their district covers an area “just a little over the size on Staten Island,” including most of Fremont, the Town of Delaware, a bit of Callicoon in Sullivan County, and a portion of Hancock in neighboring Delaware County.

In recent years, the Upper Delaware VAC has averaged 200-225 calls per year, but “now we’re just shy of 250, with one-and-a-half weeks to go in 2023,” said Connor. “This year has been extremely busy for us,” he said, adding, “The state of EMS in Sullivan County is very, very fragile, volunteerism is a dying breed… not a lot of people want to do something for nothing; it’s a cultural or societal thing.”

At last count, there are 17 ambulance services in Sullivan County, of which four are paid (in full or partially), while the remaining 13 are strictly volunteer.

“A lot of the volunteer services are struggling to retain or recruit members,” noted the outgoing captain, who is a 2010 graduate of Sullivan West High School. When he took over as captain of the Upper Delaware VAC in 2018, they had three EMTs (himself, Kaitlin and his mother), and today they have nine certified EMTs.

“It’s a very high-stress job at times, like firefighters and cops,” he said. As a tragic example, the corps responded to a situation in which a young child, who was being watched by a babysitter, fell into a body of water and drowned.

“My mother responded to the scene and attempted life-saving measures… Our ambulance crew stayed with the family at the hospital for a number of hours after the fact to comfort them, because it’s a very small, close-knit community.”

Kaitlin Duffy, the newly elected captain of the corps, graduated from Hancock High School in 2010, and joined the local volunteer ambulance squad four years ago.

Her grandmother, Elizabeth “Betty” Rosengrant, was an EMT while her dad served in the Hancock Fire Department. After a relative was diagnosed with cancer, she signed up for an EMT course.

“It sucked me in,” Duffy recalled of her first course in emergency medical services.

Asked what it was like to give back to her community, she replied, “It has its ups and downs. Doing good for the people who we see every day is  a phenomenal feeling… it’s a very gratifying thing to have a significant impact on a lot of families in a small town.”

In a recent incident, a corps crew was in the office when a call came in that someone in the community had passed, and they quickly responded.

“It was a very traumatic thing for the family,” she recalled. “It was a tough one, but we were a familiar face, and it made the situation not as horrific as it could have been.”

One of her main goals in taking over the helm is to get more members to “our tight-knit group.” That group is proud of its 91.8 percent call coverage as a volunteer ambulance service, a statistic that equates to being able to respond to almost 100 percent of calls for assistance, without having to resort to mutual aid.

On the topic of the state of volunteerism, Kaitlin Duffy said, “It’s touch and go. Some people just don’t have the time for it anymore.”

She explained the Upper Delaware VAC does a lot of outreach, showing their colors in the community.

“They see us when they call 911; we show up with bags in hand, and they see us being out in the community showing these kids we’re normal pople. We walk in and the little kids say, ‘We know who you are; you had that ambulance that was decorated for Halloween.’ It’s a familiar face walking in the door, and shows there’s people out there who care and can help.”

For information about the Upper Delaware Volunteer Ambulance Corps (VAC), located at 26 Kellam Bridge Rd., write them at P.O. Box 258, Hankins, NY 12741, email updell63@yahoo.com, phone 845/701-3400, or visit them on Facebook.

For more photos, visit www.riverreporter.com.