Mark Lauer heard Friday morning, Aug. 18 that Chicora American Legion Post 642 was planning to donate more than $2,000 to the Karns City Regional Ambulance Service, and was almost brought to tears.

As president of the agency and a former paramedic, Lauer said the donation will help fund recruiting and maintaining good staff members, who are the lifeblood of the service.

“The folks that are on the street taking care of people, the traumatic things they see and have to be a part of, that doesn’t stop when they drop them off, that’s with them forever,” Lauer said. “It makes me happy and proud to be involved in the organization.”

David Fleeger, commander of Chicora American Legion, said the post has money, more than $4,000 in total, that has gone unused for years, so administrators decided to donate half of it to the ambulance service and half to the Chicora Volunteer Fire Department.

According to Fleeger, the legion has money saved specifically to make donations to community agencies and projects.

“We have several fundraisers; the (Memorial Day) parade is one; we print out pamphlets, booklets with about 150 businesses that advertise in it,” he said. “We decided, ‘Let's give it to our emergency services we have in the valley.’”

Giving the excess money to local emergency response departments was an easy decision for the officials of the legion post, according to Fleeger.

“We work very closely with Chicora fire department, the Chicora Moose; the fire department and Chicora American Legion sponsor the Memorial Day festivities,” Fleeger said. “Everybody thought that was a great idea to give them the money.”

Lauer said more and more donations and financial aid have been coming into Karns City Regional Ambulance recently, which has him optimistic about the future of the service and maintaining consistent staff for it.

“We are seeing money come in from all over,” Lauer said. “I get emotional because the community is so behind us, they know that it takes everybody to be involved in this group to make it work. It’s just an amazing group of folks, the community as a whole.”

This story was updated Aug. 24, 2023 to clarify that more than $2,000 went to the EMS and another more than $2,000 went to the fire department.