EDGE New York City

When Dr. Howard Tichler, a West Islip-based orthodontist, learned that his village of Fair Harbor needed a new ambulance, he decided something had to be done about it--and fast.

"I said we can’t sit around and wait for 25 pancake breakfasts to get this money," said Tichler from his Fair Harbor summer home, which has become a base of operations for a grassroots fundraising drive this season. "Something had to be done, because this is not some poor community that cannot afford an ambulance."

The Fair Harbor Fire Department’s EMS team, which was started in 2005, has been using a 14-year-old ambulance they bought used from Ocean Beach Fire Department when New York State urged Fair Harbor to start a medical response crew. The district includes more than 600 homes between Fair Harbor, Dunewood and Lonelyville. And while the secondhand ambulance gets the job done, it is showing signs of age.

"It serves us well, but we need a new one," Fair Harbor Fire Department Chief Scott Cherveny, clearly pleased that the initiative was taken, said.

In an attempt to spare the community a tax hike to pay for the new ambulance, just as the district is about to pay for a fire house renovation project, Tichler and his wife, Carol, ultimately jumpstarted an infectious wave of volunteerism and charity in the west-end community. Kids in the community, some of whom also happen to be patients of his on the mainland, helped by hand delivering letters asking for donations to carefully selected members of the community.

"The response from these few handpicked people has really been dramatic," Tichler said, noting that he knows nothing of fundraising, but sought guidance from Murray Barbash, the founder of Dunewood, who gave him a roadmap. As of press time, he’s raised about half of the $110,000 needed for the new ambulance, some from donors who gave $10 bills to three who gave $10,000 checks over the past two months.

At that pace, it looks like the sick and injured in these communities will be riding in a late-model ambulance a lot sooner than anyone had expected.