Casey Reardon (Provided photo)

SARANAC LAKE — Casey Reardon, who has more than two decades of experience as a combat veteran and local police officer, is Adirondack Health’s new emergency preparedness coordinator.

“My ultimate goal is to make sure everyone goes home safely,” Reardon said. “When people go home to their families at night, all the effort that goes into that is worthwhile. I think it’s going to be fantastic: the experience I have combined with the leadership and experience of the hospital staff.”

Reardon spent more than 20 years in law enforcement, the majority of which were served with the Saranac Lake Village Police Department, including time as assistant chief. Reardon said his experience as a local police officer has allowed him to step into his new role at Adirondack Health and see both sides, bridging the gap between things that go on inside the healthcare organization and things that happen in the public.

“It’s really interesting seeing Adirondack Health from both sides now,” Reardon said. “You have this perspective when you’re on the outside in law enforcement — how the hospital works, the facilities and the people that work there. But until you actually work here, you don’t fully understand just how big of an operation it is and what it takes to keep its facilities secure. It’s one of the biggest infrastructures and employers in not only Saranac Lake, but the region.”

Using the connections he’s made throughout the Tri-Lakes over his years as a law enforcement officer, Reardon said he’s in a unique position to connect Adirondack Health to the community and law enforcement in a new way. He said his steady communication with local public safety organizations is a win-win situation for both the security and emergency preparedness of the organization and the surrounding communities.

“Ultimately, I want to end or solve our security issues well before they reach Adirondack Health grounds,” Reardon said. “My goal is to have such a good relationship with local community leaders and emergency services that we identify issues ahead of time and deal with them before them come to roost.”

Reardon also has experience as a combat veteran with the U.S. Army, serving tours in Iraq in 2004 and Afghanistan in 2009. In Afghanistan, Reardon led an infantry squad performing embedded police mentor work outside Kandahar — one of the most volatile districts in Afghanistan.

“As a police mentor, we created a security plan for the entire district,” he said. “We started from scratch. That experience was invaluable. We were reaching across language and cultural barriers to establish a security plan that benefited the entire region.”

Reardon said he is currently in the gathering and planning stages at Adirondack Health. His first weeks have been devoted to harvesting information and perspectives. He said he values hearing each department’s perspective on the security of the organization and how they believe security can improve.

“We want to create a culture of security,” Reardon said. “You need to develop it within your leadership and your staff. Everyone needs to be thinking about security and safety.”

Reardon said it’s a unique challenge to prioritize security in a place of healing like Adirondack Health.

“You can’t lock all the doors, fortify the building, or bar the windows, so we’re working to create a place where the healing environment and the secure environment co-exist,” he said.

As the husband of Carrie Reardon, Adirondack Health’s AVP of patient care services, he has a lot of empathy for healthcare workers. Carrie has been with Adirondack Health for almost 20 years and has been an important member of the organization’s nursing leadership and COVID-19 planning and execution team. Carrie’s daughter, Chloe, also recently joined Adirondack Health as a phlebotomist. Casey said having his family working at the hospital has helped shape his goals for the organization’s safety and security.

“It really drives the point home for me that people have families,” he said. “I know that every person I see in the hallway at Adirondack Health has loved ones at home that they need to go home to. It helps me feel the burden of making sure our staff, patients, and visitors go home safely.”

Reardon said the executive leadership team at Adirondack Health is devoted to improving the safety of their organization. He said getting a solid plan in place requires seeing what fits for the organization, whether that be infrastructure changes, technology upgrades, or more “boots on the ground” in terms of security guards.

Creating a more secure environment for staff, patients, and visitors is one of the primary goals of Adirondack Health’s long-term management action plan.

When he’s not thinking about security, Reardon is a jack-of-all-trades, operating several of his own businesses, selling real estate and spending a lot of time watching his children’s hockey games with his wife, Carrie. One of his businesses is 39 Bravo Beef Company, run out of his family’s roughly 100-year-old ranch in Bombay. And a portion of 39 Bravo’s proceeds are donated directly to veterans or veteran service organizations.

“It incorporates my favorite things: the veteran community, ranching, farming, and family,” he said. “To run a beef operation that feeds vets from my family farm that I ran around in diapers as a kid is a really cool thing. We love raising the beef cattle.”