Emergency Department Nurse Recognized as Hometown Hero

Imagine your elderly parent with dementia goes missing or your child who was hiking with friends cannot be found. What do you do? One of your first calls may be to local law enforcement and, luckily for our community, our law enforcement calls Michaela Hruskova, RN.

Michaela is a K9 search and rescuer who volunteers her time – and three Belgian Malinois – to help locate missing people.

For the past eight years, Michaela and her K9s have participated in approximately 50 searches annually across our community. This has included searches on both water and on land. When she’s not searching, she helps train and educate others. She volunteers her time to local scouts, training them about search and rescue techniques and is a certified Wilderness First Aid Instructor.

Throughout the years, Michaela has also traveled and trained with different instructors to train others in search and rescue techniques as part of her volunteer role as a K9 educator with Northeast Search and Rescue.

Michaela was recently honored at the Hometown Hero award ceremony. Representative Josh Gottheimer presented Michaela with a Congressional Certificate of Recognition in honor of her contributions, not only in the Hackettstown Medical Center Emergency Department, but also in the community as a volunteer search and rescue team member. The Congressman ended the nomination presentation with these inspiring words.

“Some heroes don’t wear capes; they wear hiking shoes. Often putting her safety at risk, Michaela has been known to rush from her role as a nurse to volunteer her own time to search for missing persons in our community. Never knowing what to expect, she and her K9 companions search for runaways, Alzheimer's and dementia patients, missing children, hikers and others.”