My name is Natalya and recently my friends and I lost our friend, James, suddenly and unexpectedly. Together with James' family, we are creating a team for the American Heart Association Heart Walk in his honor.  Here is a message from James' fahther: In memory of our son James David Backus, we are creating a team full o family and friends to honor him in the American Heart Association Heart Walk.  As many of you know, we lost our amazing son in his sleep to a heart condition we had no idea he had.  James had Arrythmogenic Right Ventricular Cardiomyopathy (ARVC).  This is a rare condition where the muscle in the right ventricle gets damaged over time which then in turn causes issues electrically for the heart leading to sudden death. This tends to be a genetic condition which the only way you would know is by getting genetic testing done.  James was a very happy and healthy 14 year old boy.  He had a smile and laughter that was contagious to all he encoutered.  James was very athletic playing multiple sports on top of working out in the gym multiple times a week.  Given how active James was, it was all the more shocking to find out he had anything wrong with his heart.  James had just finished an amazing football season where he played both offense and defense and was never on the sideline.  As you know that is a lot of stress to put on the body but yet he never once complained about any symptoms associated with the issues he had.  Given what happened  to James we have a strong desire to educate others  and one of the ways doing that is teaming up with the American Heart Assoication.  We look at this walk as a kickoff to our journey doing whatever we can to honor James as well as make others aware how these conditions can fly under the radar and end up deadly.