Putnam County Operation Life was awarded the Ambulance Provider of the Year Public Relations award at the annual 2011 Indiana Emergency Response Conference Award program Aug. 19.
It received a plaque commemorating the dedicated services it provides to Putnam County.
According to Executive Director of Putnam County Operational Life Kraig Kinney, past winners of the award were selected from the conference's members. This year, the Indiana Association of Towns and Cities chose the winner by blind selection.
"We're proud because it's a way to recognize how hard we've worked in the community," Kinney said. "We want to keep on building on what we've already done."
Operation Life is a private ambulance service provider consisting of employees and volunteers that offer their services to the Putnam County community. Seven of those volunteers are current DePauw students.
Juniors Katherine Hill and Matthew Keinsley, who have volunteered regularly since April 2010, said the award was a well-deserved reflection of excellent collaboration with Putnam County.
"It recognizes how Putnam County Operation Life interacted with the community and served all the residents," Hill said.
Like many volunteers, Hill and Keinsley are trained to work as professional Emergency Medical Technicians. They are required to fulfill hectic duties such as directing patient care, driving the ambulance, working with paramedics and attending various town functions in case of emergency, but they say the valuable experience they receive makes their job worthwhile.
"Even though we're volunteers, we're still called EMT's as far as Operation Life is concerned," Keinsley said. "We just go in and work whenever they need people to fill in shifts so that we can get experience in working with the full-time staff."
According to Kinney, DePauw students have always played a significant role in Operation Life, which was founded in 1937 by a group of DePauw students who wanted to reform emergency services in Greencastle. Although the organization is now a private ambulance service, Kinney and some of his employees graduated from DePauw.
"A lot of the volunteers come from the Winter Term EMT class I taught to help students gain exposure to training," Kinney said. "But it also worked as a recruiting tool because a lot of them ended up wanting to volunteer."
For students like Hill and Keinsley, becoming a volunteer signified the passion they had for assisting others. The award received was a perfect way to symbolize the collaborative teamwork between the university and Putnam County
"This is a way for me to help people in the community as a DePauw student and reach out to others in Greencastle and Putman County, instead of just staying within DePauw's campus," Keinsley said. "It kind of gives me that broader spectrum on helping people and to figure out what I can do for others."