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09/07/2022 08:30 AMTami LaCroix has spent nearly 20 years helping Connecticut Orthopedics—the company she works for—grow its customer base and establish itself as a preeminent orthopedic group. Now that business is booming, Tami says, “It’s time to give back,” and she does so by leading the company’s volunteer efforts to help residents in the communities in which her employer operates.
“The company has grown tremendously since I started there 18 years ago,” says Tami. Today, Connecticut Orthopedics has some 700 employees, which helps patients throughout New Haven County.
Tami earned her Bachelor of Science degree in physical therapy from Quinnipiac College in 1997. Later, she returned to Quinnipiac University (QU) to earn her Master of Science degree in orthopedic physical therapy in 2006, before QU built the new medical school in North Haven on the site of the former Aetna headquarters.
Tami was drawn to the healthcare field because of her desire to help others, and her choice of physical therapy stems from her own experiences as a youth.
“I broke my arm when I was eight years old and went to see Dr. Norman Kaplan,” recalls Tami. “He recently retired, but he worked for Connecticut Orthopedic specialists, where I work now. He was just so excited about the field of orthopedics and that’s kind of what sparked my interest in it.”
Beyond that encounter, there was little additional influence on her career choice since, “My mom was stay-at-home mom, and my dad was a butcher,” says Tami.
“I'm a physical therapist [and] I'm also the site lead at the Branford location of Connecticut Orthopedics,” explains Tami. “I spend most of my day treating patients [and] I’m responsible for overseeing the staff that we have in the Branford location as well, but I spend most of my days treating patients. We see mostly orthopedic injuries, post-operative patients, and non-surgical patients as well. And we see lots of athletes,” Tami says, adding, “those [patients] are fun to treat.”
Before joining Connecticut Orthopedic, Tami worked at Danbury Hospital for two and one-half years and then at Saint Raphael’s for three years.
In January 2021, Tami says her manager, Ed Strosnick, “asked all of his site leads where we wanted to see the department going, and what kind of things we could do to improve our department,” states Tami. “I said I felt like one of the things we could do is get more involved in our community, so he said, ‘Hey, why don't you go ahead and lead that.’”
Tami assumed the role of organizer for the outreach committee—reluctantly at first, but then she grew to love it—with the help of other interested employees. But getting the program off the ground took an extra bit of effort. The volunteers found themselves setting up the program in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It was definitely hard to get stuff up and going [since] no one wanted to do anything in person,” notes Tami. “We had a lot of ideas we wanted to get up off the ground and we were hoping to touch base with [school] coaches about injury prevention and how to get your athletes back in good condition prior to the start of the season when they hadn’t been doing anything throughout COVID. Unfortunately, it wasn't something that we were able to do in person, but we were able to record two of our therapists giving a presentation on injury prevention and we did get that out to some coaches, and it was pretty well received. We're hoping to do some more of that in person in the future.”
During the outreach committee’s first full year—all of 2021—they achieved several milestones and gathered a great deal of support.
“[In 2021] we did a few food drives, we did a couple of toy drives around Christmas time, and then this year we were able to do a few more things because we had the company behind us once they were able to see what we did on a smaller scale,” says Tami.
“We did a backpack drive this year for school supplies,” continues Tami, “and we did a pet food drive where we donated to [an] animal shelter, and we also sponsored some road races. At the road races, we go out and interact with some of the runners and talk about injury prevention and things like that.
“When we do things like food drives, school supply drives, and toy drives, each office tries to support whatever organization is local to that office,” states Tami, noting that the company’s offices exist in several towns.
“We have a bunch of offices,” Tami points out. “I work at the Branford office, but we [also] have offices in Hamden, Guilford, Milford, Orange, Shelton, and Trumbull.”
With that much presence in New Haven County, much of the support that Tami and her crew provide to people in need spills over to area towns, which benefits even more people.
Tami says it’s enjoyable helping others, and she believes in turning business success into a chance to help others outside of the workplace. “As the company has grown it's kind of our responsibility to give back to the community and it's great to see that our efforts are going towards people in need,” says Tami. “Last week we brought 30 backpacks filled with school supplies to the Sterling House Community Center in Orange, and I bought many boxes of food to [a] food pantry.
“It's our job to help people,” explains Tami of the healthcare profession. “But when we were a small organization, we were working so hard to grow the company and get more patients, but now that we're so big I feel that it's our responsibility to do that,” Tami says of branching out and volunteering to help people in need.
At home, Tami has the love and support of her family: husband Tom of 21 years, and two sons, 15 year old Cameron and 12 year old Mason. “They both play hockey and baseball and study martial arts,” says Tami.
And Tami’s influence on her children is important to her as a parent. “It's great to be involved in [volunteer] organizations,” concludes Tami. “It's important for people to get involved because if not, who’s going do it? I think that it's important for my kids to see that it's important to give back to the community.”