Vital Friends to the rescue
By April Baumgarten, BHG News Service
If you asked Riverdale residents about their ambulance department a year ago, they might have told you it was dying a slow death. Now more than 30 volunteers have breathed life back into the very necessary service, longtime ambulance driver Peggy Rask said. “I’m just ecstatic,” she said. “From where we were a year ago to where we are now is unbelievable.” Vital Friends of Riverdale Ambulance Service answered the call of help last fall with less than 10 residents from Pick City, Underwood and Riverdale, organizer Karen Czaplewski said. Since then the group has grown and has helped the ambulance service start anew. “It’s just taken off,” Vital Friends President Brad Thrall said. “It’s very rewarding. It’s given us an opportunity to meet more folks in and around Pick City and Riverdale that we didn’t know. The community’s spirit is just awesome.”
