A member of the Guelph Police Service was honoured for saving the life of a colleague.
Special Const. Angela Mitchell received an award from the Police Association of Ontario for being the runner-up of the 2022 Police Services Hero of the Year Award.
The award was presented to Mitchell by PAO president Mark Baxter at a ceremony inside Guelph Police Service headquarters on Tuesday.
Also in attendance were Ontario’s Solicitor General Michael Kerzner, Green Party Leader and Guelph MPP Mike Schreiner, Guelph Mayor Cam Guthrie, and Guelph Police Chief Gord Cobey.
“It’s really nice to have all these wonderful people come to recognize it,” Mitchell said. “It’s quite surprising. I’m humble. I have a big personality but very quiet in this regard.”
Mitchell was nominated by Jerry Vsetula, a retired Guelph Police Service officer, who suffered a heart attack while working inside the Guelph courthouse on Oct. 22, 2018. Mitchell was also working in the courthouse at the time.
“I saw that he was in distress,” Mitchell said. “I wasn’t going to let it go. Anyone who knows me knows that I was going to take care of what needs to be taken care of for Jerry.”
Vsetula was taken to Guelph General Hospital at the insistence of Mitchell. It was there that it was confirmed that he was indeed suffering a heart attack. Vsetula was later transferred to St. Mary’s hospital where double bypass surgery was performed. He admitted that he would not have gone to the hospital if it was someone other than Mitchell that told him to seek help.
“Angela is a pitbull,” Vsetula said. “And when she saw something wrong with me, she says, ‘You’re going to the hospital whether you like it or not.’ No one else would have said that.”
Mitchell added, “Jerry is quite stubborn too. But I made it very clear that I was going to take him to the hospital.”
Both Vsetula and his wife, Kelly-Anne, were also in attendance for the award presentation.
In her emotional speech, Kelly-Anne Vsetula said, “There were many heroes that day. The staff at Guelph General Hospital from triage to nurses to doctors, the medical transport people who brought him back and forth to St. Mary’s hospital, the physicians, the dieticians, the physiotherapists, and the cardiologists. But those people only got to be heroes because of Angela.”
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