History
Our organization has a rich heritage of providing prompt, professional service to the residents of the town of Penfield for more than 40 years.
The Penfield Volunteer Ambulance was founded in 1966. At that time, when you needed an ambulance in Penfield, you had to call a commercial ambulance from the city of Rochester. After a number of serious calls where it took an ambulance over 30 minutes to arrive on scene, the Lions Club in Penfield formed a committee to investigate if a volunteer ambulance service in Penfield was feasible. The committee determined that a volunteer ambulance service in Penfield was feasible and the Penfield Lions Club raised $15,000 to purchased our first ambulance. The Penfield Ambulance responded to 160 calls during our first year in operation.
At first, we were only able to staff the ambulance on evenings and weekends. Gradually, we were able to add a day at a time until we reached our goal of 24 hours, 7 day service. Soon after, we added a second ambulance. In 1977, we began training Critical Care Technicians and the Lions Club came through again and purchased a station wagon to be used as our critical care unit, Medic 6, our critical care unit. In 1977, our Critical Care Unit merged with the Southeast Quadrant to cover the towns of Penfield, Perinton, Pittsford and East Rochester. (link to SEQ)
Our first facility was in an old nursery on Whalen Road. We built our first base on Jackson Road in 1967 and later expanded as the agency grew. In 2002, we demolished that structure and erected a new building that houses our current operation.
We maintain a fleet of 3 ambulances and house one of the SEQ vehicles in our quarters.