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Forest Hills Ambulance Corps Needs Your Help to Keep Saving Lives

By Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska | March 25, 2015 10:51am
 The Forest Hills Volunteer Ambulance Corps has been serving the Forest Hills and Rego Park since 1971.
The Forest Hills Volunteer Ambulance Corps has been serving the Forest Hills and Rego Park since 1971.
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DNAinfo/Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska

QUEENS — The cash-strapped Forest Hills Volunteer Ambulance Corps is asking for your help to continue their mission of saving lives.

The ambulance corps — an all-volunteer nonprofit that has served Forest Hills and Rego Park for nearly 45 years — needs to raise $100,000 to stay afloat and pay for liability insurance, gas and equipment.

Last year, the organization, which is made up of roughly 50 volunteers, responded to more than 300 calls and transported nearly 200 sick people to local hospitals, Ron Cohen, a volunteer EMT for the group, wrote on the group's GoFundMe page.

“Our volunteers are available around the clock, seven days a week and receive no pay in return for their hours of service,” Cohen wrote. “We are asking for your help to ensure that our mission of saving lives and rendering medical aid to people continues.”

As of Wednesday, the group's GoFundMe campaign had collected $690 of the $100,000 goal.

The organization needs a total of $150,000 to survive, and so far has been getting by on state and city grants and donations from local residents.

But grants have become harder to get recently, said Alan Wolfe, 41, who's been volunteering for the group for more than two decades. And even after the grants are allocated, it's a long time before the funds are usable, he said.

“It’s become extremely difficult to raise money with limitations of government funds,” Wolfe said.

The EMT group is also trying to raise money for a memorial garden to honor Richard Allen Pearlman, a teenage volunteer EMT who died on 9/11.

The memorial would be built in front of the organization’s headquarters on Metropolitan Avenue.

In 2011, the organization received a grant from the state for a new ambulance, which was finally approved earlier this year. The group, which currently has two ambulances and one response truck, hopes to be able to buy another vehicle in a couple of months, Wolfe said.

Meanwhile, the group has been trying to be more innovative with its fundraising efforts, he said. Last year, it organized a comedy show fundraiser.

“We will be happy with anything that the community is willing to give,” Wolfe said.