Hayfield ambulance director nominee for Minnesota 100 Club award

For the past five years, Nicole Bacigalupo, has led the Hayfield Ambulance as director.

Now she’s being recognized as a nominee for the Minnesota 100 Club.

“I am extremely humbled to have even been considered as a nominee,” Bacigalupo said. “When I think about all of the first responders across the region, the state and the country who have all done things just like I have, ones that have done more, ones that have been in the trade longer, ones that have also saved lives...I find it difficult to extrapolate just how absolutely honored I am to have been chosen as a nominee for this amazing award.”

Bacigalupo explained the nomination is for First Responder of the Year from the MN 100 Club. “It is a peer nomination and will be voted on by peers, later on this year,” she wrote.

“The MN 100 Club is an amazing organization that provides financial assistance to families of first responders who have been killed or injured in the line of duty,” Bacigalupo said.

Bacigalupo explained she was nominated for her work in helping to keep the ambulance going, something critical with rising costs for ambulances.

“In the past few years the cost of everything has risen, but our funding has not,” Bacigalupo wrote in an email. “The price of covering shifts, buying supplies and keeping up with maintenance was beginning to mount. I worked to connect with other agency leaders, local officials and community members to compile information and advice from multiple sources. I attended multiple City Council meetings with pages upon pages of data. I then held a Town Hall style meeting to inform the community about the funding issues. With going to our City Council in Hayfield and ultimately working with city officials, we were able to come up with a feasible plan and options to fund the department into the future.”

Family Affair

Bacigalupo began her career as an EMT 17 years ago this September. She began her career with the Lake City Ambulance Service in 2007, a year after graduating high school.

In 2009, she joined Hayfield, covering shifts on the weekend, with her now husband John, who she met while working in Lake City.

She would later take a job as an emergency room technician in Red Wing, eventually moving to Dodge County with John in 2011.

Bacigalupo was interested in “something more” for a career in public safety so she took a job as a 911 dispatcher for the Dodge County Sheriff’s Office in 2013, eventually taking a similar job with the Rochester Police Department/Olmsted County Sheriff’s Office.

“I fell in love with dispatching as much as I’d fallen in love with EMS,” Bacigaluposaid. “I enjoy being in smaller departments where you can really make a difference and where leadership is so very important. I am currently the director of Hayfield Ambulance and a dispatch supervisor at Rochester Police Department.”

Aside from meeting her husband through the ambulance, Bacigalupo’s family roots in ambulance services goes back to when she was a kid.

“I grew up around ambulances and within a public safety family. While I was growing up my mom, Donna, was a volunteer EMT for Lake City Ambulance Service,” Bacigalupo said. “I would find myself going to the station with her, studying skills and learning with their crew. It was a group of people, a team, “the crew”...I was a small part of it then, but I wanted to be a real part of the crew when I was old enough. I was enamored by the thought of being the one in the rig someday. When I graduated high school, the first thing I did was register for and put a deposit down on my EMT class.”