By Baylie Evans
The Wyoming Tribune-Eagle
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — As ambulances fly from call to call in the city every day, a few stuffed animals are always along for the ride.
The technicians and paramedics keep a couple of soft toys in the trucks to give to scared children they see as patients or who ride with a family member to the hospital.
They give out at least one a day, said Lori DeMello, an EMT intermediate with American Medical Response here.
It’s a scary thing, riding in an ambulance. And while a stuffed toy might not always help, it can sometimes be just what a child needs, she explained. Sometimes they just need something to hug or something soft to cry into.
Sometimes they can help calm an Alzheimer’s patient as well.
“Warm, fuzzy things can have an emotional effect,” she said.
She and Brenda Hammock, a paramedic with AMR, were at St. Mary’s Catholic School for a special donation drive the school held for them Friday morning.
It was the last day of school there, and the students filed into the school gym for their last assembly, many of them holding teddy bears or other colorful critters.
Even on the busy last day of school, when it would have been easy to forget to think about others, it was easy to see the generosity of the students.
They lined up to toss their toys in the large plastic garbage bags that DeMello and Hammock held.
Some of the youngest, only 3 years old, tossed in toys that were nearly as big as they were.
Local schools sometimes hold teddy bear or toy drives for AMR, but the company doesn’t request them, DeMello said. This one happened because her 10-year-old daughter got tired of her own stuffed animal collection being raided, DeMello said with a laugh.
In only a few minutes, the two left with five giant trash bags full of soft toys. It was more than they were expecting.
“This should last us for the summer,” Hammock said.
As they carried the heavy bags out to the waiting ambulance, she added, “people are awfully generous.”
Copyright 2010 Cheyenne Newspapers, Inc.