Mandy Cousins, community outreach coordinator with Cranberry Township EMS, said she began her career at 16 years old — and hasn’t lost her passion for it.

“That was a long time ago,” she said, laughing. “I was just interested in helping my community and helping people, so when I was 16, I became an EMT.”

After completing her training at the Community College of Allegheny County, Cousins said she began work with Richland EMS in Gibsonia, Allegheny County.

For the most part, she said her introduction to the field was rather “normal.”

For the most part.

“They were normal calls,” she said. “I mean, my first cardiac arrest was my neighbor, so that one was a little rough.”

Her transition from EMT to community outreach coordinator with the township was “a very long and unique process” though.

“It’s not really something that happens with all EMS agencies, not everyone has an outreach coordinator,” Cousins said. “I was actually first approached by the people at Cranberry to come and help with a program called Safe Landings.”

The township’s Safe Landings program is offered for new and expecting parents, providing educational training in everything from CPR to child-proofing a home to car seat safety, according to Cousins.

“By the time I started with Cranberry, I was an EMT for many years, I was also a CPR instructor — I’d been that for many years — and then I was a car seat technician,” she said. “So those are the three qualifications that you have to have just to be a Safe Landings provider.”

Beginning work as a Safe Landings provider, Cousins said her current position with the township did not yet exist.

“The deputy director did most of the stuff that I do now,” she said, “but they wanted to expand it and make it more of an actual position because of the importance it held at Cranberry Township EMS.”

So five years ago, Cousins took her current position with the agency.

And while the work of an EMT is to “preserve life and promote health and safety,” she said, the job of a community outreach coordinator in Cranberry focuses heavily on the latter.

“I help to preserve life too, hopefully, but the health and safety part is more where I’m at,” she said. “It’s one of the few agencies that really does put a large emphasis and a large amount of time into actually allowing prevention programs and safety awareness and talking to the community about being prepared for those first few minutes before we show up.”

The Safe Landings program remains a major part of Cousins’ responsibilities, she said, as well as providing free car seat checks.

“We do them twice a week, and each car seat that we check is a half an hour of a one-on-one interaction, and it’s a free service,” she said. “This is something we truly offer to our communities with no strings attached.”

But among the position’s further responsibilities — and Cousins’ initiatives — are programs like first responder stickers for neurodivergent homes.

“It was a group development of stickers that are available to anybody that essentially has somebody that, if first responders approached them, they’re not going to respond the way that we anticipate them to,” she said. “It just says, ‘Occupants may not respond as expected.’”

Additionally, Cousins manages first aid training, wellness checks, educational tours and community events.

But the well-being of her team, she said, remains one of the most persistent challenges of her job.

“I think the biggest challenge is, and this is true for a lot of EMS, making sure that our personnel is taken care of,” she said. “Making sure that we’re not forgetting that we need to pay attention to our own health and our own mental health.”

In an “incredibly challenging” field, both physically and mentally, Cousins said the circumstances make for a high turnover at agencies.

“I do feel strongly about mental health,” she said. “We’re currently trying to work on getting together a peer support team and things like that.”

And such a demanding field demands remarkable people, according to Cousins.

“It is an extremely challenging job that takes some very, very special people to do it,” she said. “And I’m not saying that about myself, I just think we have some incredible people that give everything from themselves.”

Earlier this month though, Cousins was identified as one of these remarkable people with a Hometown Hero award from the Cranberry Township Noon Rotary Club.

“My initial response was, ‘This says that I’m getting recognized, was this a mistake?’” she said with a laugh. “But the people that recognized me were my chiefs, and, to me, it was incredibly special because it was a recognition of how much they perceive the importance of my job.

“I truly, truly appreciate it.”