48 Years and Counting
Millcreek medical equipment ministry makes
an impact around the world. By Angela Magee
The entire Chosen IMA team takes a moment for a group photo. The group helps to provide
medical equipment to healthcare providers in impoverished countries.
T
he story of Chosen International
Medical Assistance (Chosen IMA) began
in Erie nearly half a century ago when
Richard Love, a quality control employee of a
medical equipment manufacturing company,
traveled to a hospital in Korea on a mission
trip.
Once home, Love noticed his employer
discarding a sterilizer that was in far better
shape than the one he had just worked to
fix at the hospital in Korea. He requested the
rejected unit, refurbished it and shipped it to
Korea.
The entire experience prompted Love to
take a sabbatical from his job. He traveled
extensively, visiting nine countries and 32
hospitals on his first excursion. Love saw how
great the need was in impoverished countries
to get reliable, safe and functioning medical
equipment. He decided to start Chosen.
Love began the ministry from his home on
Love Road in Millcreek. Quickly outgrowing
his garage, he moved operations to a
warehouse, and then outgrew that space as
well. In 1984, Chosen IMA eventually settled
at its current location on West 26th street.
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Love passed away a few
years ago at the age of
92 and is survived by his
wife, Edith. Chosen IMA’s
executive director Rick King
and three other full time
employees now carry on
Love’s life mission.
Today, the ministry
supplies medical
equipment to clinics in
110 countries around the
world, donates more than
100 home healthcare items
to local Erie residents each
month and sends teams
of volunteers on medical mission trips to
Mexico.
In the beginning, Chosen IMA took any
kind of medical equipment and supplies it
could get and refurbished or repurposed
them for hospitals in impoverished nations
that had little chance of being able to afford
any decent medical equipment.
The ministry found a niche with its
sterilizers, especially as advances in
technology made the units increasingly
reliant on electronics. Chosen IMA makes a
unique sterilizer, as it is completely stripped
down and taken back to 1950s technology.
Rick King explains, “We take a modern unit
that is donated and we strip it down, take out
the electronics and then we bead blast it so
it’s clean. We paint it, remount it and build a
new framework around it. It’s all manual. No
electrical on it at all.”