By Matt Bennett
Greeley Tribune
GREELEY, Colo. — Kristie Skala pours fake blood all over a young man lying on the pavement with a piece of rebar sticking out of his chest.
An ambulance, with its sirens blaring, pulls up to the graphic scene and students training to become first responders jump out of the emergency vehicle to administer aid.
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Although fake, the construction site accident looks real, really real.
Skala instructs the students to speed up and quizzes them on how they plan to help the unresponsive individual.
It’s just another Monday morning at Aims Community College’s Public Safety Institute in Windsor.
Skala, who worked as a paramedic in Weld County for more than a decade, started teaching EMS part-time at Aims in 1992 and even helped develop its first paramedic program in 2007. She eventually joined Aims’ staff full-time and has worked there ever since as a professor of emergency medical and paramedic services. Skala was also a student at the community college in 1991. It was then that she took her first EMT class, having no idea of the profound impact it would have on her life and others.
“It was just kind of a fluke that I took the class. I wanted some more medical knowledge,” Skala said.
At the time, Skala was working in health, exercise and fitness with long-term care agencies.
“I had no intentions of being an EMT, but I really enjoyed it and could tell the people out here really cared about students,” Skala said.
Earlier this year, Skala was named EMS instructor of the year by the Northeast Colorado Regional Emergency Medical and Trauma Services Advisory Council as part of its 2025 annual awards.
“I don’t feel like it’s just mine. It’s a team effort,” Skala said of the award. “I’m very appreciative. I did not get to this point without a lot of people training me.”
Skala recalled her early days at Aims when the program consisted of one classroom. At the time, students moved tables out of the way and practiced scenarios in the one room.
Today, Aim’s Public Safety Institute includes a 53,000-square-foot, two-story facility equipped with simulation rooms for paramedic and EMT training, a gym, classrooms, computer rooms and more at 1130 Southgate Drive in Windsor.
The property also houses “Sim City,” a movie-set-like area with streets, buildings and intersections for live scenarios and more hands-on training.
“It was much, much different than it is now,” Skala said.
After playing the part of the rebar victim earlier in the day, Erich Joas still had fake blood on his shirt. As one of Skala’s students, Joas has found himself in several simulated emergency situations at Aims where he’s had to learn on the fly.
“(Skala) throws you in, and you sink or swim,” Joas said. “But it’s really good because you get a lot of experience of how things are going to be.”
The emergency medical services field is experiencing a shortage of workers, particularly paramedics. The 2024 Ambulance Employee Workforce Turnover Study by the American Ambulance Association and Newton 360 determined that overall turnover among paramedics and EMTs ranges from 20% to 30% annually.
“In northern Colorado , our growth has just been so vast and so quick. I think that’s where a lot of our shortages have happened,” Skala said.
Paramedic employment in the Greeley area is expected to grow by 14% while national employment is expected to grow by 7%, according to the Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration’s estimates.
Aims’ program continues to help chip away at the lack of first responders. In the Aims paramedic program, 96% of enrolled students complete the program and 100% are employed in the field within five years.
EMS cadets, from left, Anthony Quaratino , Jameson Straubing and Eli Brackett look forward as the ambulance transporting them to a training simulation pulls up to the scene in the simulation city at the Aims Community College Public Safety Institute in Windsor on Monday, April 6, 2026 . ( Brice Tucker /Staff Photographer)
Tannor Shuffler , a former student of Skala, now works as a firefighter EMT and teaches part-time at Aims as an assistant instructor of emergency medical services.
“I just think it’s super beneficial to have instructors from surrounding organizations come out and help the students,” Shuffler said. “It really helps make this course … realistic, knowing that these people work in the field.”
Thea Sims , another one of Skala’s former students who now teaches part-time at Aims, described Skala’s teaching style as unique from her past instructors.
“She teaches, I would say, in a way that’s more applicable to real life,” Sims said.
For Skala, working at Aims is so much more than a job. It’s her passion. Seeing her current students like Joas and former ones like Shuffler succeed in the field and go on to help people in the community is one of the many reasons why she loves Aims.
“Having left a small town and coming to Greeley , I felt pretty lonesome a lot of the time and I finally felt like I had a sense of family again,” Skala said. “That’s really what you get with the fire and emergency services. Working with everybody, it’s not just a job, it’s a family.”
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