An AED was donated by the Gold Cross Ambulance Service to Dicks Family Foods in Sherwood, November 16, 2023. PC: Fox 11 Online
SHERWOOD, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — A life-saving donation is expanding its reach across Northeast Wisconsin.
On Thursday, the Gold Cross Ambulance HeartStart Foundation donated an AED to Dick’s Family Foods in Sherwood and to the Weyauwega Community Center.
In the Gold Cross Ambulance service area of Northeast Wisconsin, more than 62% of people experiencing cardiac arrest have an AED applied before EMS arrives – far surpassing the national benchmark of 29%.
These new AEDs expand that lifesaving care to rural areas.
The areas were determined by student nurses at UW-Oshkosh who analyzed data to come up with the best two locations.
Students chose Dick’s Family Foods because a lot of Sherwood residents shop there and there is a park across the street that would be able to have access to it as well.
“We had like a spreadsheet of where cardiac arrests had happened in this area versus how close the nearest AED was and some places it was like a few miles, 10 minutes, 5 minutes like that, a short amount of time can be the difference between saving someone’s life and not unfortunately. So as many places as we can get them, it’s going to save more people’s lives,” explained student, Katie Kugel.
Jonathan Mogilka, the operations manager at Gold Cross Ambulance, says the students did a great job.
“It was fantastic, they were really eager to learn something new and to really help out their community, that’s why people get into healthcare is to help people so when they’re going through the student project, we were lucky enough to partner with them to be able to find a really good useful, community project that they can use for their senior project as well. So we really helped each other out, got an AED where we needed to get an AED and the students go their student project as well and the community got something that they really need,” Mogilka said.
The Gold Cross Ambulance HeartStart Foundation has donated more than 600 AEDs in its service area of Northeast Wisconsin.
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