The Sanilac County Police and Firemen’s award banquet was held Saturday night at Huron Shores in Port Sanilac, with several awards presented to both private citizens and other emergency personnel. 19 people in all were honored for their dedication to emergency situations in the County.
Five people were honored for their quick response to a structure fire in Croswell that resulted in saving five people from a burning apartment. Pat Schott and Eric Gomez received Citizen of the Year honors for their role in the rescue, along with Croswell Police Officer Zac Overtsreet being named Police Officer of the Year with David Phettplace and Daniel Murphy of Croswell EMS collecting EMTs of the Year, also for action taken at the Croswell fire.
Lt. Ryan McConnachie was named Corrections Officer of the Year for his work during the COVID pandemic while serving in his regular capacity as a member of the Sanilac County Sheriff’s Office. McConnichie helped coordinate testing and treatment of COVID patients in the jail, any required quarantines and maintained safety throughout the department. Jennifer Hartel was named the Dispatcher of the Year for her work on July 4th of 2019 in a case of a subject with a gun that led to a police chase. Hartel helped keep the situation calm as officers handled the complaint.
The President’s Award was presented to former Sheriff Garry Biniecki for his more than four decades of service to the Sanilac County Sheriff Department. Biniecki, who retired at the end of his term last year, after 44 years with the department, served the County for 12 years as Sheriff.
The Bronze Award was presented to the late Roger Wood who served in the fire department at Brown City for 30 years, 26 of those as Chief of the department.
A special “Above and Beyond” award was presented to Todd Hillman for his work as Sanilac County Emergency Management Director during the COVID pandemic. Hillman’s leadership and organization of county departments was key to helping keep the number of cases of the virus, and unfortunate deaths, relatively low.
Life-saving awards have been presented to Deputy Chad Schmidt. Sgt. Christopher Kravitsky, Deputy Todd Laming and Dispatchers Rikki Hostetler and Carli Evans. Meritorious awards were given to Dispatcher Sarah Nichols. Deputies Otto Kutach and Bryan Helig and Corrections Deputy Nicholas Gould
