Alicia Elder holds her daughter, Loren, dressed as Snow White, in front of Cinderella’s castle at Disney World. While Elder would normally be spending those nine days working more than 100 hours in one of her three primary positions throughout the community, she is instead focusing her attention on spending quality time with her daughter visiting the various theme parks and feeling like princesses.

WARSAW—Every mother desires to be a woman their child can look up to and make them proud. Alicia Elder, Warsaw, seems to have that under control while raising her 5-year-old daughter, Loren.

Elder holds multiple important positions within the community with her primary focus being on helping members of the community.

Elder works the night shift from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. as a paramedic at Lutheran EMS Kosciusko. She is the EMS captain at Pierceton Fire Department as well as the president of the Pierceton Chamber of Commerce. A typical week has her working between 65 and 75 hours, with the aid of the occasional nap and energy drink.

Her responsibilities include teaching CPR classes during the day, normally five or six classes a week. The goal of these classes is to make it easy for anyone in the community to get trained so she will come to businesses, churches and even residences to teach. EMS and first responder training are also part of her duties. Although it does not come with certification, Elder also performs free community CPR training every other month at the Pierceton Community Building.

On top of the training and classes Elder also coordinates smoke alarm installation. She schedules free smoke alarm installation appointments which most people do not even know are available. She is also the coordinator of the car seat program. She not only performs car seat checks but she makes arrangements with those who call to meet them where they are so the child is not put in a possible unsafe situation. Elder stated these preventative measures help paramedics because otherwise “those children in unsafe car seats end up being our patients.”

Growing up in South Whitley, Elder realized she wanted to move closer to Warsaw because Warsaw had one of the most respected and competitive EMS programs available. While taking a medic class in Fort Wayne, her drive brought her to the small town of Pierceton. Throughout her travels she fell in love with the culture of the town and moved there for three years.

Emphatically speaking about Pierceton, Elder recalls falling in love with the small town feel. While living in the town she became passionate about keeping businesses in the town. This is what partially led to her nomination to become Pierceton Chamber of Commerce president. She adores how supportive the community is, encouraging her and staying positive in her role.

As if that were not enough to make anyone proud, Elder is also working to complete her nursing degree through an online program at Excelsior College. She explained the program is specifically designed as a transition from being a paramedic to nursing. However, she also admitted, once completed, she is not sure what she will do with her degree. Although exhausting, Elder loves each of her roles and isn’t quite ready to give any of them up just yet.

Her daughter also keeps her extremely busy participating in swimming, gymnastics, tumbling and on a dance team. Elder is thankful for her family and support system that help with her daughter amongst all of her responsibilities.

At the end of February, however, she took some well deserved time off and made another dream of hers a reality. She spent nine days enjoying Disney World with her daughter.

Elder teaches a CPR class at the Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce, Warsaw. Here she shows the difference between performing CPR on a child as opposed to an adult.