Hollister PD Benefits from Skaggs Foundation Grant

The Hollister Police Department received a grant from the Skaggs Foundation to purchase automated external defibrillators for the city and the police cars.

AJ Meakins of the Branson Tri-Lakes News has more on the story:

According to the Skaggs Foundation website, the foundation funded $22,548.60 to Operation AED: Hollister Police Department, which will place 14 AED units throughout the Hollister community. By placing these units throughout the community, Hollister Police Department will be able to provide lifesaving assistance to individuals experiencing sudden cardiac arrest. Currently, the city has four AEDs spread throughout city hall, the parks department, police department and in one patrol car. This grant allows the city to place an AED in every city building as well as in all patrol vehicles, ensuring a life-saving device will much more likely be available when needed. 

Skaggs Foundation Director of Community Relations Mindy Honey explained Officer Bret Taylor applied for a grant to purchase the AEDs. 

“Officer Taylor came to us last spring. He applied for little over $22,000 for the AEDs,” Mindy said. “Officer Taylor went through the whole process and we were happy to fund this. It’s an incredible resource that we’re able to help provide. We’re grateful to Officer Taylor for taking the initiative to come to us, because without him making that first step to come to us and ask for that. We don’t know what the needs are.”

Hollister Ward I Alderman David W. Honey told Branson Tri-Lakes News, the city is proud of Officer Taylor for getting the grant and has plans to distribute the wall mounted units around the city and each of the police cars will be equipped with a pelican case AED unit. 

“First and foremost, this will meet a lot of needs. Police officers are usually the first ones on-site,” David said. “They’ve already proven themselves capable of saving lives, and now they will have another tool to help them in each car. We are also putting them in a bunch of different locations within the city including at city hall, the community building, the public works department, and parks department.”

David said the more public places they could place them the better.

“It gives us more instant access to help save lives and everything else,” David said. “It’s about the safety of our residents.”

Mindy said the foundation has funded dozens of AEDs over Stone and Taney counties over the years. 

“We worked with the Taney County Ambulance district to start with and worked with local school districts and other municipalities,” Mindy said. “I think this is by far the largest we have funded in a while, but we recognize how important AEDs are. I know, years ago, we heard a story of one located at the Hollister School District being used on a student. It’s a no-brainer for us to fund stuff like this. Especially, knowing officers are the first ones on the scene. We want to know they’re equipped to take care of the situation. We don’t want somebody to lose their life because of a lack of equipment.”

Marelly AED & Safety CEO and President Chip Georges told Branson Tri-Lakes News, AEDs can save lives when a sudden cardiac arrest happens. This can happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time. 

According to the Marelly AEDs and Safety website,the more support the better when a cardiac arrest happens. The chance of a lay responder providing high quality CPR to a victim is very low, simply because the person has probably never performed CPR on a victim before. AED will increase the chances of a successful rescue, cut down on confusion, and provide the closure a good Samaritan needs after an SCA event.

Taylor explained the department knows how important the AEDs are for the community based on prior need for them. 

“It’s actually hit our department fairly close to home a couple times. We’ve had two saves where our officers used AEDs to save lives,” Taylor said. “One fairly recent and one was four or five years ago at the school. At the school, our school resource officer used one the school had to save a student. So it’s just something right there on the forefront for us.”

Taylor said he expects to see more police departments in the area to get the pelican AEDs for their cars in the near future. 

“The trend is coming for law enforcement having these in their cars,” Taylor said. “There are several states where the state is spending millions of dollars to do this for police departments. We’re kind of ahead of the curve in Missouri. We’re not the only ones doing it, right now in Missouri, but we’re ahead of the curve as far as putting them in all of our cars.”

According to Taylor, Hollister Police Chief Preston Schmidt was the one who encouraged him to fill out the grant and took the initiative to get a quote from Marelly. 

“I think what it boils down to is the fact, even on medical calls, there are a lot of times we beat the ambulance there or an ambulance will not come in until the scene is secure,” Schmidt said. “You know seconds count with heart related emergencies, so why not put these in our cars? We’ve already had a save a few months ago at the gas station and more will come. It’s not if, it’s when. So when that happens our officers will now be more prepared.”

Schmidt and Taylor expressed their gratitude to the Skaggs Foundation for funding these life saving tools for the city of Hollister. 

“The Skaggs Foundation is wonderful,” Taylor said. “They gave us that money. Then this is what we’re gonna do with it.”

Mindy said she wished more people in the community would apply for grants to help the health of our communities. 

“We need people like Officer Taylor to take the initiative and say, ‘Hey, this is something important we need in the community to make it healthier.’ We need people to come to us like he did, because without him we wouldn’t be here today when the city gets its needed AEDs,” Mindy said. “Huge kudos to him for what he did. We’re blessed to be able to be the funder, but without people letting us know what is needed we just don’t know. We have just three people in an office. We read reports and we need to know from the community what the needs are and they need to come to us and tell us what the needs are.”

According to Mindy, the Skaggs Foundation will be opening up grant applications for the 2022-2023 grant cycle in February. 

“All the information can be found on our website, where they can go to find all the information. We’re opening up applications on Feb. 1 and then closes April 20. We awarded over a million dollars this last year, and it’s solely for Stone and Taney County’s health and wellness. It’s a huge investment in our community. It’s and so we would love to be able to do that again this coming year.”

For more information visit www.skaggsfoundation.org.