SEQUIM — Thanks to the Sequim-Dungeness Hospital Guild, emergency responders can continue doing what they do best: saving lives.
Clallam County Fire District 3 accepted a check for more than $11,000 from Sequim-Dungeness Hospital Guild members last Tuesday at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church during the guild’s annual Christmas appreciation luncheon.
The Sequim-Dungeness Hospital Guild donates proceeds from its membership dues and the guild’s all-volunteer Thrift Shop in Sequim twice a year to support community health.
“The shop has had a really great year,” guild President Jean Janis said.
The luncheon also serves as a way to say thank you to the guild’s year-round volunteers with a potluck lunch and a performance by Sequim High School’s select choir. Sunny Farms donated deli turkey and Olympic Medical Center donated the dessert.
Fire Chief Ben Andrews said the money from this year’s donation will go toward purchasing eight new automated external defibrillators (AEDs) that will be distributed to Fire District 3 volunteers throughout the Sequim community.
Andrews said the goal is to “issue these to them so if there’s a need for one in their community they can go straight there.”
He added that throughout the past two years these devices have been used to save the lives of several people. AEDs are portable devices that can send an electric shock to the heart in an effort to restore a normal rhythm in the event of a cardiac arrest.
The guild’s publicity chairman, Adeline Curtis, said while the organization has been around since 1970, its current enrollment is at an all-time low and it is always looking for more volunteers.
To visit the guild’s thrift shop, visit 204. W. Bell St. in Sequim or call 360-683-7044 for more information.
