Your Incredible Neighbors: Retired nurse shares her life-saving skills

If a disaster were to strike Southern Arizona, would you be prepared with a three-day supply of drinking water, medicine, clothing, some cash and canned or dried food?

Those items are among the necessities we should all have on hand, says Green Valley resident Laura del Peschio, a member of CERT, the local Community Emergency Response Team.

“I’m a firm believer in being ready,” del Peschio says. “The more we train to be ready for anything, the better off this nation will be.”

Del Peschio, who has been designing disaster drills since the 1970s, joined CERT in 2004 and became a CERT instructor the following year.

“I love to draw up disaster drills,” she says, noting that “we have to practice to be ready.”

About 270 area residents have gone through CERT training and many of them are ready and able to back up Green Valley Fire District staff in case of an emergency.

All of those who have been trained “can take care of themselves and their neighbors,” she adds.

The training is offered weekly for two and a half hours for eight weeks. Then, monthly meetings are held to keep members up to date.

On April 30, CERT will offer a table top drill at GVFD Station 152 on Camino Encanto, del Peschio says.

She also is looking forward to attending in June a bioterrorism conference sponsored by Pima County.

Del Peschio, 66, and her husband, Thomas, moved to Arizona in 1978 and settled in Green Valley in 2001. The couple have three children and seven grandchildren.

Del Peschio has been a nurse for 47 years and received her certification at Henry Ford Community College in Michigan. She went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in management at the College of St. Francis in Illinois and a master’s in management at the University of Phoenix.

She has worked for the Lake County Health Department in Illinois, was a school nurse for a year, and spent 25 years with the VA hospital in Tucson, now known as the Southern Arizona VA Health Care System.

She retired from SAVAHCS in May 2002, but still works in computers there two or three days a week per diem.

“I think it’s the best in the whole nation, and the guys are the best. They gave so much to their country,” del Peschio says of the veterans.

She also taught introductory pharmacology classes at Pima Community College for 12 years and was a instructor in computers for nursing for three semesters at the University of Phoenix.

“I loved it,” del Peschio says, noting that she enjoyed working with college students.

Since 1979, she has been teaching CPR, first aid and use of AEDs (automatic external defibrillators) through the American Heart Association, She’s a regional faculty member and teaches instructors in these life-saving skills.

She can tell it makes a difference when former students will call her and say, for example, they helped a child choking on a piece of candy and could still hear del Peschio’s voice guiding them through the steps.

“That feels good,” she points out.

She recommends CPR and first-aid training for parents, day-care workers, health aids and even Boy and Girl Scouts, who all learn how dangerous incidents can be prevented.

In her spare time, del Peschio enjoys sewing, knitting, crocheting, scrapbooking and computers.

She’s made quilts for each of her children and grandchildren and currently is creating one for a coworker expecting her first grandchild.

Still on her to-do list: making a quilt for herself.

kwalenga@gvnews.com | 547-9739