St John is staring at a post-lockdown financial hole and is restructuring to cut $30million in costs.
Pauline Latta knows too well the life or death nature of the ambulance service’s work.
Her children had been in ambulances several times, due to broken bones and serious allergic reactions.
"Without an ambulance turning up it could have been a really different outcome," she said.
Her experience was one of the factors that prompted her to start a petition on change.org that asks the Government to fully fund the service.
As of yesterday afternoon, 13,002 people had added their signatures.
She said the thousands of signatures in just three days showed the public was behind the move.
"From a lot of the comment coming through it just seems like a no-brainer. There’s a lot of shock, I guess, that this hasn’t already happened."
She hoped the petition would attract at least 100,000 signatures.
St John Coastal Otago territory manager Doug Third said his team had already signed the petition and were sharing it as widely as they could.
"It is fantastic and humbling to see a member of the public so passionate and caring that they are also taking up the cause to help us; we are right behind any public support we can get to fully fund the emergency ambulance service.”
In late June, St John chief executive Peter Bradley said about 100 jobs were expected to go, although cuts to frontline staff would be minimised.
Ms Latta said she hoped to deliver the petition to the Government in Wellington.
