Mutual Aid Ambulance CEO and operations manager depart, board tabs former coroner Ken Bacha interim CEO

Two years after changing administrators in charge of its day-to-day operations, Mutual Aid Ambulance Inc. confirmed its new chief executive officer and director of operations departed this week.

The Greensburg-based nonprofit said Friday that CEO Douglas DeForrest and director of operations Lorenzo Garino are no longer employed with the ambulance service.

“I can only confirm that they no longer work here,” ambulance service public information officer Shawn Penzera said.

Penzera declined to disclose a reason for the departure of either administrator.

“We cannot comment on the reason,” Penzera said.

DeForrest, 45, had been CEO less than two years.

“I have no comment,” DeForrest said when reached by telephone at his home in Fayette County.

Garino said in a telephone call Friday that he has taken a new job with Ambulance and Chair Emergency Medical Service in Washington County. In a letter Garino sent to co-workers that was provided to the newspaper, he thanked his co-workers and administration for support and opportunities he was given at the ambulance service where he worked for 11 years.

“I couldn’t pass it up,” he said.

Penzera said the board of directors named former Westmoreland County Coroner Ken Bacha as the interim CEO.

Bacha, 60, was the county coroner for 20 years until he was defeated in the 2021 election by Republican Tim Carson. Bacha was hired in April as the ambulance service’s chief operations officer.

Mutual Aid provides ambulance service to about 200,000 people in the region. It serves two-thirds of Westmoreland County and portions of Fayette and Somerset counties and has expanded into many communities in recent years.

In September 2021, Mt. Pleasant Township Supervisors signed an agreement to provide emergency medical service there 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

It was the eighth area municipality in the past five years to sign on with Mutual Aid. In November, the ambulance service also expanded its services in Derry Township, where it had been serving 60% of the residents.

In February 2020, board members confirmed that longtime chief executive Joseph Yencha was removed from his post along with operations director William Groft and business office manager Theresa Straka. Yencha had been with the ambulance provider since 1982.

No reasons for those changes were disclosed.

Attempts to reach board members for comment Friday were unsuccessful.

The ambulance company was founded in Greensburg in 1968.