Blood, Sweat and Tears: A New Ambulance for a Remote Area Brought to you by the Volunteers Who Save Your Lives
Getting a new ambulance for Southern Trinity Area Rescue (STAR) this last January is mostly the story of a group of dedicated volunteers. The kind of folks that staunch bleeding wounds, wipe sweat from feverish foreheads and weep tears at home for your pain. Then they sell snowcones, raffle tickets and dinners to buy an ambulance to help you.
In January, their hard work paid off. For 35 years, STAR has been covering the people living in the remote corners of Trinity and Humboldt Counties. For the last half dozen or so, they’ve been watching their “fleet” of two ambulances decay.
“We’ve been saving for the last 6 or 7 or 8 years,” explained Brooke Entsminger, EMS Manager. “We got a little more than $20,000. Then we got lucky.”
Entsminger’s idea of “luck” consists of pounding the pavement and manning the phones searching for organizations willing to help. “I approached the McLean Foundation,” she said. “They talked to [St. Joseph Hospital] who donated $15,000 and they donated the rest.”
What really helped secure that funding, she pointed out, was the donations gathered from the community. The McLean Foundation wanted to see community buy in, she explained. 
STAR is very excited about its most recent ambulance. “It’s brand new and our other ambulance is 16 years old,” Entsminger said. “It is smaller. It will go through some of those curvy bridges….It will be better for the small curvy roads….It has a warranty.”
The new vehicle will save the group money because the older ambulance it replaced was “costing us thousands every year for maintenance,” she explained. Typical of the determined people who wade through blood, sweat and tears to bring their injured and ill neighbors to medical care, Entsminger waved off gratitude.
“We owe a big thank you to the community who helped us,” she said.
And we’re pretty sure we owe you much more than thanks. We owe you our lives.
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Congrats, you deserve it.
This group deserves a…… lost the words because they deserve so much. This is a well trained volunteer group that goes on calls at every hour, for any medical emergency. They shouldn’t have to raise the money themselves. They do more than people know. Next time you overdose on your couch at 3 am, not only thank them, but give them some of your dope money.
STAR volunteers deserve every bit of the good Karma they earn. But, it can’t be the ‘same old people’ all the time. Get off your butts all you young dudes and dudettes – Volunteer. It’s and awesome experience to be part of this outrageous community/family. Find out why people start and then never want to leave. Not a lot validates your existence like saving someone else’s.
Well said.
I sure remember back in the mid eighties the old Ford ambulance they started out with back in the day.Very nice to see them get this.
Very awsome.
And we think our roads in Humboldt are really weird… Good neighbor Trinity has ” CURVY BRIDGES ” they have to drive “THROUGH” Sounds like those good folks could use some help … Snow cone sales? J.C. LORD have mercy.!!!!! Dig a can out of the chicken yard and kick down Humboldt neighbors. Im sure alot us Humboldters make our living driving through ” The Curvy Bridges of Trinity Co”. Never know when you might need these fine neighbors life saving help. Where do we send a donation?