Amish community helps ambulance service
Karen Peterson
The Amish community raised money for the Mission Valley Ambulance service during an auction.
Karen Peterson
Gabriel Schrock, 8, and Malachi Yoder, 4, visit with a pig during the auction.
Karen Peterson
Karen Peterson/Valley Journal Folks enjoy a sunny morning during the auction.
Karen Peterson
Auctioneers take bids on many items including a pig and a rocking chair.
Karen Peterson
Karen Peterson
Karen Peterson
Karen Peterson
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ST. IGNATIUS – Folks in the Amish community held an auction to help the Mission Valley Ambulance service with desperately needed projects.
One might think that because the Amish don’t drive cars that they wanted to help the ambulance service to make sure they can get to the hospital if they need it — but that’s not the case.
Auction Coordinator Ed Beachy said that luckily the Amish haven’t really needed to use the ambulance service, but as members of the community, they can see that the service is in need and they want to help.
“The better service they can provide, the better it is for everyone,” he said.
Beachy said that the way the ambulance service is organized doesn’t make much sense to him.
“All that they do and all the hours that they put in, they should get paid,” he said of volunteers. “They should be paid like policemen.”
While some ambulance services are paid, the Mission Valley Ambulance service gets about 400 calls a year, which only qualifies them as a volunteer service.
Emergency care provider Gwen Couture explained that the service receives reimbursement from insurance companies, and they do get a small amount of tax revenue.
“We get just enough from taxes to pay city hall for the rent to park the ambulance,” she said adding that insurance companies don’t pay a lot for services.
The revenue isn’t enough to fix a lot of the things, and the two biggest problems include the ambulance and facilities.
“We are desperately trying to replace our rig and update the facilities,” she said. “We barely have enough room for the ambulance, no facility to conduct training, and no office space.”
And if they get a new ambulance, it won’t fit in the facility.
“Newer ambulances are taller,” she explained. “Which is one of the reasons we don’t have a new one, besides funding.”
Volunteer emergency responders are called to help in emergencies at all hours while juggling jobs and families, and they do it because they like helping people and they’ve developed a friendship among service members, but they say not having adequate facilities makes it difficult to draw in more volunteers.
“We would love to have a place where volunteers doing shifts could sleep while they waited for calls,” she said. “Or just have a place to wait. We have nothing like that now, and not everyone lives in town, so it’s difficult.”
Auctioneer Orlie Troyer started off the event saying to a crowd of people at the Amish Community Center on Foothill Road that this year the ambulance service will be on call 366 days and they need help.
He added that 50 percent of all proceeds from the auction are going to the ambulance service and the other 50 percent are going to a local relief group called Western Anabaptist Mission Services, which is a group that does volunteer work like building houses for those in need.
“This is 100 percent donation to those causes,” he said of the revenue from donated items like a live pig, furniture, plants and other items.
Last year, the auction raised enough money for the ambulance service to purchase a new stretcher with wheels and locking mechanisms. Beachy estimates that the auction will be able to donate about $10,000 to the ambulance service.
He said that one person asked him where all the quilts went. The Amish community sells hundreds of quilts each year to raise money for their school. Beachy wants people to know that the quilt auction will be held in July.
