Bernard Heilicser, D.O.’76

Bernard “Bernie” Heilicser, D.O.’76, was featured in the Homewood-Flossmoor Chronicle on April 19 for his 33 years of service as the emergency medical system director of the South Cook County, IL, Emergency Medical Services System, a role in which he is largely responsible for developing the training, continuing education and oversight of emergency medicine in a large area of the county. Also an active member of the Flossmoor Fire Department, he joined his first volunteer fire department in the late 1970s in Blacksburg, VA, where he was working in student health services at Virginia Tech University. Since then he has been a volunteer firefighter and paramedic wherever he’s lived. For the past 14 years, Heilicser has been the medical director of Illinois Task Force 1, an urban search and rescue team that responds to disasters in the state. In addition, for the past 16 years, he has been deputy medical director of the Illinois Medical Emergency Response Team (IMERT), a nonprofit group made up of hundreds of volunteers from across the state. Following the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Heilicser joined a group of doctors from various area hospitals — Cook County, Rush, Loyola and the University of Illinois — to be part of a 10-day medical relief mission in the stricken island nation. A year later, he was able to return to Haiti as part of a United Nations mission.