Kim Eby selected for Rotary’s Dan O’Connell Award

• Kim Eby, right, displays the Dan O’Connell award presented to her by Glen Hartman

Kim Eby, right, displays the Dan O’Connell St. Croix EMS Outstanding Performer Award that will bear her name. The award is sponsored by the Hudson Thursday Noon Rotary Club. St. Croix EMS member Glen Hartman presented Eby with the award. Photo by Doug Stohlberg

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Kim Eby, who was appointed interim chief of St. Croix Emergency Medical Services, was named the winner of the Dan O’Connell St. Croix EMS Outstanding Performer Award. Eby is a seven-year veteran of the ambulance service.

The Dan O’Connell Award is bestowed annually by the Hudson Thursday Noon Rotary Club to a member of the local ambulance and rescue service selected by his or her peers.

Glen Hartman, a member of St. Croix EMS and Dive Team Coordinator, presented the award at the Rotary meeting Thursday, April 26.

Hartman, a close friend of the late Dan O’Connell, said Eby is deserving of the award.

“She demonstrates many of the same qualities that made Dan such a good person,” Hartman said. “Kim, like Dan, goes out of her comfort zone to get things done – do the right thing.”

Eby thanked the Rotary Club for the award and said it was especially meaningful because the winner is determined by peer vote. She also has the distinction of being the first recipient of the award that never met Dan O’Connell.

A native of Le Seuer, Minn., Eby was a paramedic captain for the service until her recent appointment as interim chief. She joined St. Croix EMS in January 2005. Until August 2011, she also worked as a paramedic for Allina Medical Transportation. Prior to that, she was an emergency medical technician for Lifelink III. Eby, her husband, Troy, and three children live in Hudson.

St. Croix EMS responded to more than 1,750 calls last year.

Eby’s’s name will be the ninth inscribed to the memorial plaque. Other recipients have are Christopher Kustrich, Jennifer Kerner, Ben Wasmund, Hans Lamkin (two-time recipient), Richard Wold, Jenelle Annacker, Glen Hartman and Josh Olson.

The late Dan O’Connell was a former member of Hudson Thursday Noon Rotary Club. He was killed Feb. 5, 2002, along with another employee, James Ellison, in an attack while working at O’Connell Family Funeral Home in Hudson.

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