CPR recipient spurs local school program

Catherine Brown owes her life to a fellow University of Virginia student, a middle school health class and a dummy.

Now, Brown and her lifesaver are hoping to raise money and awareness on the need for all people to learn basic life-saving skills. They have raised more than $29,000 to buy 100 CPR mannequins and other equipment to make training available for more people.

“I want people to know this can happen to anyone,” Brown said. “If Lise had not been there that day, I probably wouldn’t be alive.”

In May 2009, the then-34-year-old mother of three and UVa graduate student was meeting her college adviser in the adviser’s home when Brown collapsed in a chair from cardiac arrest.

Brown, who considers herself to be healthy, never had had heart problems, nor was ever known to have an erratic heartbeat.

She was working on a presentation for her master’s degree and thinking about her children’s nanny who was hospitalized.

The Browns had just celebrated their youngest child’s birthday a day earlier.

“It was definitely a high stress period for me,” Brown said. “To this day, the doctors don’t know what caused it, but I believe it was stress.”

Suzanne Dvells, Brown’s adviser, called up to her daughter, who was upstairs packing for a trip abroad.

Lise Kvan, then a second-year at UVa, had learned CPR while an eighth-grader at Buford Middle School.

“My mother yelled my name and I came down to see what was going on,” Kvan said. “I saw my mom moving Catherine onto the floor.”

Kvan said that at first she and Dvells didn’t know what to do, but then Brown’s facial color started to change. They immediately called 911.

“At first we didn’t think cardiac arrest was in the picture because she’s so young,” Kvan said. “Then she started gasping for air.”

Kvan, who says she still sees the events of that day as she speaks of them, started performing CPR as she had learned in her health class years earlier.

The women estimate Kvan performed CPR on Brown for about 12 minutes, the maximum amount of time experts recommend to keep a person alive without medical intervention.

“At one point I just stood up and said, ‘I can’t do this anymore,’” Kvan said. “But then I realized that her life was in my hands and she was going to die if I didn’t continue.”

Kvan said she watched as Brown starting slipping away, but she was determined to continue until the ambulance arrived.

“I could see her dying,” Kvan said. “I knew she was dying and I knew I had to do everything in my power to help her.”

When paramedics arrived, Kvan said she stepped back and let them take over. She describes her next actions as being like the women you see on television who are in the depths of despair.

“I never understood what it could take to make someone sob uncontrollably,” Kvan said. “But that day I stood in the corner and just sobbed [in grief] because I thought I had failed.”

It would be days before Kvan and others would learn that she had not failed. It took five electric shocks to Brown’s heart and three days in an induced coma before the young mother woke up in the hospital.

“I was a mess,” Brown said. “I didn’t even know who my husband was or my children. I didn’t know what to think.”

But it didn’t take long for Brown’s memories of her life to come back.

“A lot of people die from cardiac arrest or other ailments, and they just weren’t in the right place,” Brown said. “There are a lot of times when people can be saved if someone around them knows CPR.”

During her recovery, Brown wanted to reach out to Kvan and thank her for what she had done to save her life.

The two women and their families met after Kvan returned from a trip to Jamaica and before she left for a trip to France.

They talked about what they could do to help others.

“We wanted to give a donation in Lise’s name,” Brown said. “She told us that she thought the money should go to help others learn CPR.”

Brown got into action. She checked with Charlottesville school officials to see if CPR training was still taught in the classroom.

Although it had been taught when Kvan was a student at Buford, the program had been phased out when the teacher left the school.

“I knew we needed to get CPR classes back into the classroom,” Brown said. “I wanted to find a way to make sure every student had a chance to learn these skills.”

Months later, Brown met with city schools Superintendent Rosa S. Atkins and shared her story. It inspired school officials to look into ways to get the program back into the schools.

Now all seventh- and ninth-grade students in Charlottesville public schools are able to take CPR and safety training, said Beth Baptist, director of special education and student services for the city schools.

The school system spent $20,000 in federal funds last year to train teachers on CPR and safety instruction, Baptist said. It will take an annual funding of $17,000 to keep the program in the schools, she said.

“It’s amazing that one of our former students was able to take the training she learned and use it,” Baptist said. “[CPR training] is a program we’re committed to having in the school system and we will continue to do so.”

With the city schools on board, Brown then reached out to the Red Cross in Charlottesville. Part of the Red Cross’ mission is to provide CPR and safety training classes.

The Red Cross was eager to help the school with training, but didn’t have enough CPR mannequins to handle the request in the time frame school officials were looking at, said Hamp Hall, director of operations for the Red Cross of Charlottesville.

The local Red Cross office provides CPR and safety training to 17,000 people each year, Hall said.

“We provide training to individuals and businesses,” Hall said. “We worked with the Charlottesville school system to get their teachers certified so they could train.”

The other issue for training large groups was a limited number of mannequins and the cost of having to change breathing apparatuses in the dolls that would allow more than one person to use them.

In just two months, Brown and Kvan raised $26,000 from family and friends to buy 100 new CPR mannequins and a trailer to store and haul them around in.

“I just sent out a letter to my family and friends telling my story and asking for a donation,” Brown said.

The self-addressed stamped envelopes starting coming back with checks and notes of encouragement, Brown said. Soon, the effort expanded as people passed the word along.

“I still can’t believe all of the response we’ve received,” Brown said.

In December and January, more than 500 Charlottesville students were trained on CPR and other safety skills. Brown visited with some of the students and shared her story.

She would like to see the program expand to other school systems in and around Charlottesville. Although many private schools and at least one Albemarle public school have programs, Hall said they are on much smaller scales.

Brown said her fundraising efforts will now continue to help raise more money for training not only students, but anyone who might not be able to afford class fees.

She said the training could mean the difference between life and death.

“[A heart attack] can happen to anyone and you might not even think you would need to use the skill,” Brown said. “But this training could help someone save the life of a stranger or a family member or friend. I think of my kids not having their mother and I’m so grateful Lise had this training and used it that day.”