120 beats per minute: Local students teach CPR with music
BRYN MAWR, Pa. (CBS) -- Some local high schoolers are teaching the community about a life-saving measure. Their main focus on Saturday was to bring awareness to cardiac arrest and CPR.
"Pick a song, grab a ball, push to the song, surprise you're learning CPR," Jenn Parrado from Simon's Heart Executive Director said.
It's a fun but effective way of showing people how to perform CPR.
At Harriton High School, students did 200,000 compressions during a four-hour CPR jukebox marathon to songs that all had one thing in common.
"All those songs go 120 beats per minute," Parrado said.
That's the rate at which compressions should be given when someone goes into cardiac arrest.
On Saturday, the lessons came courtesy of the non-profit Simon's Heart, which was started 18 years ago with the hope of reducing the number of deaths due to the condition.
For Simon's Heart student ambassador Sam Wizov, the mission is personal. At just 9 years old, he went into cardiac arrest after drowning.
"I was under the water for 10 minutes before someone grabbed me out of the water," Wizov said, "and my uncle, who saved my life, did CPR for 26 minutes while the AED and ambulance came."
15-year-old Matthew Brucker says this issue hits close to home for him too.
"My grandpa had a heart attack," Brucker said. "It was a while ago now, but it's just always been part of his family. His dad had a heart attack. So, it's just important to my family."
It's a cause Wizov and Brucker hope tugs at the heartstrings of their community.
"I want them to leave with being aware that this could happen to anyone and how to do CPR because it's really important and it's really easy," Wizov said.
Organizers say $25,000 was raised for Simon's Heart at this event.