IN MEMORY

Richard Emery Zuschlag, 1948 - 2024

Our thoughts and prayers are with our public safety partners at Acadian Ambulance, as they mourn the loss of their friend, mentor, and leader.
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Richard Emery Zuschlag, a Pennsylvania native who moved to Lafayette in 1970 and a year later started a company with two ambulances that he grew into the country’s largest privately held medical transportation company, died early Wednesday. He was 76 and died in Lafayette from complications following cancer treatment.
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Zuschlag was a hard-driving executive who, with two co-founders, built Acadian Ambulance Service into a company known for putting people over profits.

“The phone rang and somebody was dying, we responded,” Zuschlag said in a 2016 interview, in describing the company’s initial operating approach that grew into its business model.

At the time of his death, Zuschlag was the longtime president and CEO of Acadian Ambulance.
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Zuschlag mixed a love for mechanics — he fixed his high school’s public address system on a fateful day in November 1963 so the principal could announce the death of President John F. Kennedy — with close attention to detail and an ability to charm politicians who needed to greenlight the ambulance service’s expansion.
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Zuschlag counted presidents, senators and supreme court justices among his acquaintances — he liked to take them hunting at his luxurious lodge in Cameron Parish — but he was known for trying to do as much for political nobodies as big shots.
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“Very few people get the greatest award in humanity, which is to touch the lives of so many in such a positive way. Richard Zuschlag was one of them,” Governor Jeff Landry said of his passing. “Richard’s is a legacy of caring, of sharing, and making his beloved state and Acadiana a better place to call home!”

In 1971, with $2,500 in capital, he and two friends in Lafayette — Roland Dugas Jr. and Ronald Buckner – borrowed enough money to buy two ambulances and founded the company. They hired eight Vietnam War veterans as medics and had to cover 279 square miles of Lafayette Parish.
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Zuschlag drove an ambulance during the day and worked as a dispatcher in the evening. He often spent the night at the office in a sleeping bag.

But over time, the company grew because Acadian would provide service that no one else could.

“I did notice as I was running the show how many other people were trying to get started in different kinds of businesses and how much time they spent in planning sessions,” Zuschlag said several years ago. “They spent all their time planning and never getting anything done. That was one of my bright spots. I was a doer. When I got up in the morning, I started doing.”

Doing meant sending ambulances to transport people in need, no matter where they lived.

Page Cortez was a second-term state senator from Lafayette when a former employee called one day to say that her father had had a heart attack while driving on the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge on Interstate 10 and had pulled over. Could Cortez help in some way?

Cortez immediately called Acadian, which put him through to Zuschlag.

“He said he would have a helicopter on the Basin Bridge in a few minutes,” Cortez, who went on to become Senate president, remembered Monday. “He was so hands-on in every facet of the business. He would go out of his way to help anyone.”

Tyron Picard, founder and manager of Lafayette-based The Picard Group, said that “Richard was just this unique enigma of a personality that was a combination of Nick Saban, Henry Kissinger and Sam Walton all rolled into one. Everything he did he demanded perfection at, and sometimes you wanted to pull your hair out, but looking back it made me a better business person.”

Picard said Zuschlag often quietly helped out people in need, sometimes helping a family pay a tuition bill or someone who needed a second chance with a job.
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“I can’t imagine what Lafayette would look like had Richard Zuschlag stayed in Pennsylvania,” Picard said. “His fingerprints are on so many things in this community. He completely lifted up his community and always saw a sign of gratitude that whatever success he had needed to be shared back in the community.”

Funeral arrangements are pending.