Technician of the Year
Mandi Seethaler is a CPS technician from the Alaska Injury Prevention Center – the busiest fitting station in Alaska. She was certified as a CPS technician in 2010, and in the last two years has checked more than 300 child safety seats all throughout the state, often traveling great distances in harsh weather conditions. Through her work at the Alaska Injury Prevention Center, Mandi helps host the annual Alaska CPS Conference, where CPS technicians from all throughout the state travel hundreds of miles to attend. The conference presents an opportunity for Alaska CPS technicians to learn together and share stories of how technicians work through the challenges with small communities to encourage families to safely secure their children. Mandi lives in Anchorage with her husband, Thad, and 16-year-old son, Kolin.
Additional details about Mandi and his dedication to child passenger safety can be found in the Technician of the Year press release.
Katrina Altenhofen is the Program Manager of the Iowa Department of Public Health and was one of Iowa’s first CPS technicians and instructors. She began her career as a paramedic and joined the Iowa Department of Public Health in 1995, where she was certified as a CPS technician and instructor. She started Iowa’s Child Passenger Safety Seat program in October 1998, and the following year worked tirelessly to obtain an Iowa vanity license plate to help fund injury prevention initiatives. The “Love Our Kids” license plates are still available today have helped fund hundreds of CPS projects throughout her state. In addition to her work in Iowa, Katrina was a member of the panel that created the NHTSA Transporting Children Safely in Ground Ambulances guidelines and is currently assisting New York’s EMSC program to develop an online EMS CPS training. Katrina lives in rural Washington County, Iowa, with her husband, Mike, and is the mother of three adult sons.