In a heartbeat, you could be the difference.
9 out of 10 people who suffer cardiac arrest outside the hospital do not survive. More than half the time, no one nearby steps in to start CPR.
When my mom, Juanita, was a teenager, she was home alone with her dad when he collapsed from a heart attack. She ran to the neighbors to call 911. She still remembers watching the ambulance pull away and knowing in her heart that she would never see him again. She was right.
This story, and the trauma it caused my mom, has stayed with me my entire life. Not only that he died, but that she saw him in such a state of distress. It was the story that played in my head when I first started at the American Heart Association over six years ago as a Youth Market Director, teaching kids how to have a happy and healthy heart, and it is still the story that drives my passion for the AHA mission today.
I am fortunate to do this work for a living. As an Impact Manager with RQI Partners, a resuscitation quality partnership between the American Heart Association and Laerdal Medical, I spend my days with hospitals and health systems that take CPR quality seriously.
Through RQI I earned my own AHA Basic Life Support skills, and I have seen what happens when practice becomes a habit instead of a card in a wallet. Skills fade fast. Consistent practice is what keeps them ready for the moment they are needed.
Healthy, happy hearts are built by communities, and every dollar here supports the research, education, and training that put lifesaving skills into more hands, in more living rooms, on more ordinary afternoons.
My goal for this campaign is $500 and I hope you will help me get there. Please give what you can, and send a little love to someone you know who has experienced a cardiac event in their life. Any amount moves me closer, and sharing this with someone who should learn hands-only CPR helps just as much.
Thank you for coming alongside me, for my mom, and for the girl who had to run to the neighbors even when she knew it was too late.