A family-owned Vallejo business provides emergency services for Solano and beyond
By Matt Larson
Founded in 1979 on Nebraska Street in Vallejo, Medic Ambulance is now celebrating its 40th year in business, now providing services in Solano, Sacramento, and Placer counties. What may surprise you is that whenever anyone calls 911 in need of an ambulance here in Solano County, with the exception of Vacaville, Medic Ambulance is the county’s exclusive ambulance provider.
“We’re not your average corporate health care provider,” said President and COO James Pierson. “One of the misconceptions is that we’re a public, tax-funded agency, or that we’re part of the fire or police departments, but we’re not! We’re a private entity that runs vital community needs.”
In order to provide emergency response for all of Solano County, aside from Vacaville, Medic Ambulance has two main hubs. The first is their Vallejo headquarters, now on Couch Street, and they have another deployment center in Fairfield, which is only temporary until they move into their new building in Suisun City this November. They also have 24-hour stations in Rio Vista, Dixon, and Benicia.
“We have about 320 employees and do about 56,000 calls for service every year between all three of the counties,” Pierson said. “We’re at 82 total ambulances as a company, with about 18 in Sacramento, so about 64 in Solano County.”
In addition to emergency response, Medic Ambulance also does a lot of hospital transports, providing Basic Life Support, Advanced Life Support, and Critical Care Transport services. They don’t provide 911 response in Sacramento and Placer counties, but they do service nursing facilities, assisted living centers, and hospital transports in those areas.
“Our dispatch center is internationally accredited, so we can take any type of call,” Pierson explained. “So if somebody called our 7-digit number instead of 911, we would process the call just as if you called 911; we have a direct line to Vallejo PD and can get all the resources going, so if somebody wasn’t sure if it was a non-emergency transport they needed, we could help navigate them to wherever they need to go. But of course—we want people to call 911 in an emergency.”
Whether you call 911 or Medic Ambulance’s direct line, there is no difference in cost for the service. Again, Pierson urges everyone to call 911 first if there’s any doubt you could be dealing with an emergency situation.
“We provide a high level of service and our base rate is about $1,000 cheaper than other ambulance services that surround Solano County,” Pierson calculated. “I can attribute that to us having a very fiscally responsible family; the service we provide at the cost that we charge, compared to other providers in the region … our rates are very competitive.”
It’s not entirely unusual for such an emergency response company to be a family business, but family and community have been a major part of Medic Ambulance’s values since the very beginning. “We live in the community!” Pierson exclaimed. “And our friends and family live here too.”
Medic Ambulance was started by Pierson’s grandparents, Harry and Giannina Manfredi, along with his uncle, Rudy Manfredi. His aunt, Marisa Luchini (now retired), joined Medic Ambulance in 1980; his mom, CEO Helen Pierson, joined in 1988. Then between 1998 and 2002, Pierson joined the crew along with his sisters, Sandra Whaley and Cindy McBride, who are now the VPs of Communications and Quality, respectively, and his cousin, Kristi Kendall, who is VP of Finance.
“We really do consider Medic Ambulance as an integral community member,” Pierson explained. “Not just because we show up when you call 911, but because Solano County and the City of Vallejo is our family, so we try to be involved with the community as much as we can by supporting events, different nonprofits—anything we can do that makes our community better.”
They donate to the arts, to Rebuilding Together, to a variety of community youth programs … the list goes on and on, but the one commonality that all of their beneficiaries have is that they’re all dedicated to making the local community a better place. Pierson and his team, his family, are proud that Medic Ambulance can be a community partner in all of that. He estimates that over the last 10 years they’ve probably done close to $2 million in donations and community givebacks.
“Our number one goal is to make sure our citizens are taken care of,” Pierson said. “If people have an issue with an ambulance service, they can call us! And they’re going to talk to myself, my mom, my two sisters, my cousin—we’re all family, and we’re all owners. We can all help the person, and we care. If we can’t provide the service you’re looking for, we can help direct you to where you need to go.”
Medic Ambulance is the first ambulance company in Northern California to be certified by the Commission on Accreditation of Ambulance Services (CAAS), which they earned in 2007. Now there are about 15 CAAS agencies in the region. “It’s what they call the ‘gold standard’ in ambulance service,” Pierson explained. “That’s something we wanted to achieve, not something we were mandated to achieve.”
Plus, their dispatch center is an Accredited Center of Excellence (ACE). “We are one of 31 companies in the world to hold those dual accreditations,” Pierson continued. “So even though we’re a small ‘mom and pop’, we’re performing at a very high level.”
We highly recommend you read beyond this article to get a fuller picture of what Medic Ambulance is all about at their website, medicambulance.net. You can also call them at (707) 644-1761 or check out their headquarters at 506 Couch Street in Vallejo.
Medic Ambulance does a lot for our community and beyond. With state-of-the-art equipment, they’ve gone to San Francisco a couple of times to provide emergency assistance, spent 5 days at the Camp Fire in Butte County, and 4.5 days helping strike teams with fires in Lake County. They can also support Vacaville if their local system is ever in need.
“We’re not only a vital county resource, but we’ve integrated into being a regional and state resource as well,” Pierson asserted. “But we couldn’t be successful if it wasn’t for our employees: EMTs, paramedics, nurses, dispatchers, supply technicians, our management team—it’s a family approach to how we do our job, and we cannot be successful at all without the success of our employees. We’re very proud.”
Larson is an actor/comedian/director from Vallejo who lives a double life between the Bay and LA. When he’s not writing for Local Happenings Magazine he could be editing a short film or working on his next rap album—who knows!
Keep up with all things Larson at www.MarsLegstrong.com.”
