Sonoma County’s 7th grade CPR education program saves 3 lives

In the six years since Save Lives Sonoma started bringing hands-only CPR education to Sonoma County seventh-graders, three students have used that knowledge to keep people alive.

The latest instance came a month ago when Petaluma Junior High School eighth-grader Lucy Decker was in Oakland for a Bay Area crew regatta and a spectator collapsed. A crowd formed around the man, and one of the bystanders attempted CPR. Decker, 13, stepped in to assist.

The program was born out of talks by the Sonoma County division of American Medical Response - an effort not just to teach people how to perform CPR, but also to get working defibrillators on school campuses.

“We recognized that what we did not have at the time was good coverage for that first four to five minutes before the ambulance and the first responders get there,” said Dean Anderson, regional director for AMR, which provides emergency ambulance and paramedic service in Sonoma County.

When it started, the intent was for schools to take up the training themselves, incorporating it into physical education and biology classes.

Over the next five years, Save Lives Sonoma trained more than 4,000 students and teachers at more than 30 Sonoma County middle schools, according to a story published last spring in Sonoma Medicine, a journal of the Sonoma County Medical ?Association. On the south side of the county, the Petaluma Health Care District has pledged to provide the annual training itself. In partnership with the Petaluma Fire Department, trainers are sent into PE classes at Kenilworth Junior High School, Live Oak Charter School, Petaluma Junior High School and Mary Collins School at Cherry Valley every year.

The classes helped Forestville teen Lewis Griffith save his dad’s life in August 2014. Less than a year later, Emmy Stephens-Jackson, a Petaluma teenager, saved her mother’s life. Both parents had suffered heart attacks.

“We’ve empowered local kids to make life-changing and life-saving differences,” said Jeff Schach, battalion chief for the Petaluma Fire Department. “The fact that countywide we’ve had three people’s lives saved shows the benefit to everyone knowing hands-only CPR and becoming comfortable with the use of a defibrillator.”

You can reach Staff Writer Christi Warren at 707-521-5205 or christi.warren@pressdemocrat.com.