By Clark Judge.
When Mike Haaga walked into the Killingworth Ambulance Association after answering an emergency call Sunday afternoon, he smelled something unfamiliar coming from the building’s kitchen. It wasn’t something foul or something burning. No, it was something altogether different.
Something downright appetizing.
“Peanut-butter cookies,” said Haaga, the KAA’s chief of service.
Close. Actually, they were peanut-butter/oatmeal, and they were among five kinds … and two-to-three pounds … of cookies donated to the KAA by local businesswoman Andrea Freibauer, originator and owner of Andie’s Cookies. She dropped them off the previous afternoon with friend and EMT Lisa Ditlevson-Anderson, attaching a note that read: “Thank you for all you do! Stay well and stay safe! Enjoy!”
It was signed by Andrea, Larry and Valleri Freibauer.
“It was an impulse thing,” Andrea Freibauer said later. “It just popped in my head that this would be a great place to go. I was trying to think of someone who would appreciate the cookies and someone who worked on the front lines.”
She came to the right address.
First of all, responders are always on the front lines, and with the COVID-19 alert they’re on them now more than ever. In fact, the KAA this March reported six more calls than over the same period last year. But second, the association’s EMTs not only appreciated the cookies; they devoured them.
“Obviously,” said Haaga, “we’re very appreciative. It was a great gesture. I just thought: How nice of somebody to do this.”
Choosing the KAA, however, was no random act of kindness. Freibauer knows of its work first-hand. EMTs more than once have been called to her home to look after her father, whom she had moved to reside with her and her family.
“He has some health issues,” she said, “so I’m always supportive of the Ambulance Association. They’ve always done a great job of taking care of him.”
Her story is reminiscent of one told recently by Killingworth resident Heidi Giaccone, who donated 10 R-95 face masks she found in her family’s basement. She thought of the KAA, she said, because of her contact with its EMTs while responding to calls to her late mother’s home.
“I just remember that everyone was so kind,” she said. “I wanted to help the people who help others first.”
Two weeks later, Freibauer remembered, too. And she followed.
