Kay Neal operates an AED Lifepack at a CPR training course. Heart Safe La Plata is looking for volunteers near automated external defibrillators who will receive a text or phone call if there is a cardiac event within a quarter mile.
Kay Neal operates an AED Lifepack at a CPR training course. Heart Safe La Plata is looking for volunteers near automated external defibrillators who will receive a text or phone call if there is a cardiac event within a quarter mile.Durango Herald file

Heart Safe La Plata is looking for some life-saving volunteers.

Through a new software program, volunteers near an automated external defibrillator will receive a text or phone call if there is a cardiac event within a quarter mile.

While the program has not saved a life yet, there was an emergency medical call recently in Town Plaza and three people showed up with AEDs.

“We were kind of proud of that,” said Barb Lawson, a coordinator for Heart Safe, who lives near Bayfield. “We need people who live and work near our AEDs who are willing to grab it and go.”

There are 365 AEDs throughout La Plata County. AEDs are portable devices that check heart rhythm and can send an electric shock to the heart to try to restore a normal rhythm. AEDs are used to treat sudden cardiac arrest.

Heart Safe AEDs have saved eight lives this year in La Plata County. The new calling-text program was developed by Atrus Inc. One of the few hiccups in the system is that it cannot navigate a phone tree, so the phone numbers have to be an answered line.

Bills Koons, an EMT paramedic and Heart Safe La Plata coordinator, said Heart Safe offers classes for businesses and schools, as well as CPR and first-aid classes on the first and second Wednesday of every month.

Businesses can purchase AEDs through Heart Safe La Plata for about $1,400.

And through Heart Safe La Plata, an average of 1,600 people a year take some sort of CPR/AED class. Most of those people are locals, Scott Sholes said earlier this year, and some are taking it for the second or third time. Sholes is the emergency medical services chief for the Durango Fire Protection District.

All this, he said, contributes to a highly educated and alert public that can keep each other safe.

“It’s an amazing success story for us,” he said. “We love seeing all the hard work pay off and lives saved. And that’s what we’re seeing.”

Lawson said Heart Safe is working with Atrus to see if the area for notices can be extended in rural La Plata County, where hardly anyone lives within a quarter-mile of an AED. And while the program is working in Durango and Bayfield, Heart Safe is applying to get the new program running through Ignacio dispatch to reach residents of Ignacio and the Southern Ute Indian Tribe.

The Durango Herald contributed to this report.

Volunteers needed

To sign up to receive an automatic AED call, call Barbara Lawson at 884-2406 or email [email protected].
Volunteers need to be trained in CPR and able to receive a phone call or text.