Fra Noi Embrace Your Inner Italian
As an analyst for the Air National Guard, Paul Lauricella was tasked with tracking the spread of COVID in Illinois and helped to identify locations for testing centers and then vaccination sites.
The older of two children, Paul Lauricella was born in Elmhurst, Illinois, to Paul and Christine Ackerman Lauricella. His paternal great-grandparents emigrated separately from Agrigento, Sicily, with their families, met in Chicago and married.
Lauricella grew up in Bloomingdale enjoying family gatherings and a combination of Italian, German and American cultures and foods. His paternal grandparents lived in Chicago Ridge. “For me, growing up in the suburbs and going to an Italian neighborhood, it was sort of a back and forth between cultures in a good way,” he says. “My grandparents tried to keep their Italian roots but also were in that generation that was looking to Americanize.”
Lauricella attended DuJardin and Erickson Elementary schools in Bloomingdale and graduated from Westfield Middle School and Lake Park High School. “I knew at an early age that public service was the way for me,” Lauricella says. “I started working as a maintenance crew worker for the village of Bloomingdale Public Works, fixing water main breaks and fire hydrants and things of that nature.”
His interest in public service led him to the urban and regional planning program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Lauricella graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree and began working for DuPage County as a zoning coordinator.
During his employment with DuPage County, Lauricella helped residents, businesses and developers improve their properties or build new ones while working within the county’s regulations. “Throughout that time, I felt I was doing good for the community and that was positive,” Lauricella says. “I really enjoyed that work, but underneath all that was a desire to serve in uniform.”
After nearly 10 years in the work force, Lauricella joined the Air National Guard with the 183rd Wing based in Springfield, Illinois. “So many folks join right after high school,” says Lauricella. “That path wasn’t quite for me, but that desire was still there so I wound up enlisting in December 2016.”
A unique function of the Guard is that you select your job, and Lauricella chose to be an analyst. “That was something that I was interested in, just sort of turning my sights outwardly and wanting to have some knowledge and interaction with what was going on in the world,” he says.
Lauricella completed basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, followed by six months of training as an analyst at Goodfellow Air Force base in San Angelo, Texas. “I got to study what was happening in the world and help report on it,” Lauricella says.
When the COVID pandemic was in its earliest stages, the Illinois Emergency Management Agency needed extra help. “They called the National Guard and said, ‘Give us people,’ and I got to be one of those people,” says Lauricella. “So that’s what led me to making maps for data analysis for them because I had already had that experience being a city planner.”
He reported for active duty in Springfield, initially for one month, but as the pandemic spread Lauricella’s stay was gradually extended to nearly two years. Health departments throughout Illinois reported daily to the IEMA with the number of COVID cases in their county or city, and Lauricella tracked COVID’s spread. “I put that all together in a big statewide map for the Emergency Management folks so they could get a sense of what was happening and where,” Lauricella says.
Initially, data was updated twice a day. “It was a lot of everything all at once, certainly for the first couple of months,” says Lauricella. “This notion of a global pandemic was something that nobody had heard about, and we didn’t know how to handle it.”
Data collected included the number of COVID cases in any one area and how many first responders were sick. “If you have 10 law enforcement officers that have COVID, then they can’t go out there and help people,” Lauricella says. He analyzed and compiled the information into maps indicating areas with the most widespread outbreaks of COVID. “Should we put a test center there?” says Lauricella. “So, then we’d have to (determine), can we put them in a parking lot? Can we put them in a convention center?”
As vaccines were made available, the focus shifted from testing people to getting people vaccinated, and Lauricella’s mapping responsibilities changed. “What spots should we target first?” he says. “How effective are the vaccines? How many people can we get vaccinated at any given day or week?”
He completed five years of his six-year term, renewed his commitment with the Air National Guard and switched his job to that of a public affairs specialist, his current position. Staff Sgt. Lauricella is one of the journalists on base in Springfield. He meets with visiting VIPs and shows them around while covering any type of event or training that’s happening on base. “We’ll photograph it, and we’ll put an article out there for publication,” Lauricella says. “We get to be essentially the news agency of the Wing.”
Lauricella interviews military people on base, whether they are commanders, mechanics, pilots and more. “Folks want to know what they do and what their personal lives are like. I get to tell that story and it’s been fantastic,” he says.
Lauricella’s annual two weeks of training varies from classroom studies to field work, such as practicing different techniques with a camera. This year was special to Lauricella as he traveled to Poland to train with the Polish army. “That wound up being a nine-day pilgrimage with the Polish army as the Illinois National Guard has a partnership with the Polish military through our NATO connections with them.”
Lauricella is currently employed with the village of Wilmette as a code enforcement officer, continuing his commitment to public service and helping people in his community. Now in his 10th year with the Air National Guard, Lauricella chuckles: “I might be in for a while. That’s sort of what drew me to the National Guard in particular, being able to have that ability to stay local but also to serve in a capacity that’s certainly bigger than yourself.”
He is very proud of his work during the COVID pandemic. “I got to say I was on the front lines, if you will, of an unbelievable happening in our country and in the world,” says Lauricella.
He highly recommends the National Guard for anyone interested in serving their community. “We get to handle national disasters (on a local level), and you also might have the ability to go overseas and work in a federal capacity,” he says. “That’s why the National Guard exists, to be able to have resources that can work locally, and it can also work internationally if need be.”
The above article appears in the January 2026 issue of the print version of Fra Noi. Our gorgeous, monthly magazine contains a veritable feast of news and views, profiles and features, entertainment and culture.
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