ABIGAIL JACOBSON
News Editor
Certain events or circumstances can have an effect on someone’s daily life, sometimes bad and sometimes good.
Winning the SUNY Police Chief’s Life Saving Award is one of the good ones.
Amanda Drummond, a SUNY Fredonia University Police Officer, was awarded the SUNY Police Chief’s Life Saving Award for providing first aid to a stab victim.
During FredFest last year, a stabbing occurred in downtown Fredonia. The Fredonia Police Department had called for additional assistance and Drummond arrived on the scene. She found the stab victim and applied pressure to the wound until medical personnel were able to transport the victim to the hospital.
Because of her efforts, her fellow co-workers and Fredonia’s police chief, Gordon Carpenter, recommended her for the award.
“I was surprised and excited,” Drummond said.
Drummond was born in Louisiana but grew up in Dunkirk, NY. She attended Dunkirk High School and then went to SUNY Fredonia. She received her bachelor’s degrees in criminal justice and sociology in 2007.
Before Drummond started her University Police Department (UPD) career, she was a child support investigator for Chautauqua County. Child support investigators are typically tasked with assisting in custody orders and agreements, enforcing court-ordered child support claims and collecting evidence against or in favor of the involved parties.
Drummond first started her UPD career at SUNY Oswego and was there for a year and a half in 2019. She then transferred to Fredonia, where she has been for four and a half years.
On Drummond’s days off, she enjoys going to the gym, baking, watching movies and spending time with her extended family. She also likes to attend Bills games as a season ticket holder.
Drummond loves horror movies and true crime shows and documentaries, “with a slight guilty pleasure of reality TV.” She loves to watch football and cheers for the Buffalo Bills and the New Orleans Saints. Traveling around the U.S. and the rest of the world is her absolute favorite thing to do.
Drummond has been with her husband, Jim Quinn, a sixth-grade social studies teacher at Dunkirk Intermediate School, for 14 and a half years. They have been married for 10 and a half years.
Drummond has a stepdaughter, Mackenzie Quinn, who attends law school at the University of Buffalo and has a stepson, Jameson Quinn, who attends St. John Fisher and plays football there.
Drummond also has two dogs, an eight-year-old male retriever/St. Bernard mix, who they named Gator, and a seven-year-old female weiner dog named Brees.
Drummond believes everyone you meet plays a part in shaping you. But if she had to pick one person, it would be her father, Mark Drummond. “He was always such a hard worker and taught me to trust my intuition,” she said.
Drummond described herself in one word as “hopeful,” saying she hopes “to bring a sense of safety and security along with a hope that the students can feel comfortable calling UPD when they need to.”