For the all-student Stony Brook Volunteer Ambulance Corps (SBVAC), it began with a Volkswagen bus and a Cadillac.
Before SBVAC was created, the Setauket Ambulance Service and Stony Brook Fire Department serviced Stony Brook, taking between 15 and 20 minutes to arrive. The SBVAC changed all that: Today’s standard response time is seven to 10 minutes.
Right: Inna Trygubchuk, Lieutenant, Biology BA with minor in Korean Studies
By the Door: Left: Brad Kenneally, 2nd Asst. Chief, Biomedical Engineering
Right: Kevin Quintero, 1st Asst. Chief, Biology BA with minor in History
On top of Ambulance: Left: Gavin Yu, Vice President, Biology and Sociology with minor in Health, Medicine, and Society and Right: John O’ Hare, Treasurer, Biochemistry with minor in Philosophy.
To launch SBVAC, the students made use of a donated VW bus and a 1959 Cadillac ambulance. The VW was used as a transportation vehicle while the Cadillac was the first ambulance and thus a full-time emergency service — the first such student-run operation in the country — was born.
Leo DeBobes, SBVAC’s longtime faculty advisor since 1993, addressed the emergency service’s early years.
“They operated with an old Cadillac Ghostbusters-style ambulance, later shifted to the Type II vans, and then to the modern Type III modular rigs.”
Larry Starr, SBVAC’s founder and president from 1972 to 1974, noted that the original Cadillac was built from a hearse because “hearses were the only vehicles back then that could carry a patient in a reclining position.”
In the long run, the vehicles’ strange appearance didn’t matter because “we were at the vanguard,” Starr said. The service was effective and efficient, and it had the distinction of being the first student-run operations in the country.
In 2002, SBVAC won the Suffolk Regional EMS Council Agency of the Year Award, then went on to win the New York State EMS Agency of the Year Award — a remarkable feat considering that the collegiate EMS agency competed against all community and locally funded EMS agencies in New York State.
In 2013, SBVAC won the National Collegiate Emergency Medical Services Foundation Collegiate EMS Agency of the Year Award.
Read the full story: https://news.stonybrook.edu/featuredpost/volunteer-ambulance-corps-marks-a-half-century-of-community-service/