EP. 17 Shocking Truth: Even you could have saved Damar Hamlin’s life! AEDs and Heart Health

On this episode of Advice From Your Advocates, Bob sat down with Craig Goldenfarb, Esq. who is a personal injury attorney with a practice based in Florida to discuss defibrillators and the charity that he founded through his advocacy work; Heart of the Game, Inc.

Craig was inspired to start his charity through all the cases that he has covered throughout the US on the niche topic. He stated that 350-400,000 people will suffer from sudden cardiac arrest and ultimately pass away each year. Of those, up to ten thousand cases per year are kids, who often have a congenital heart defect that they didn’t know existed. Craig knew further action needed to be taken to help prevent some of these cases and founded Heart of the Game, Inc. to provide free defibrillators and training on CPR throughout his personal state of Florida. At present, he has given away over 40 devices.

Transcript

Welcome back to Advice from Your Advocates
podcast.
I'm Bob Mannor.
I'm a certified elder law attorney
in Michigan.
Really excited about our guest today.
Craig Goldenfarb is an attorney in Florida
and a friend of mine.
And one of the things
I want to talk to Craig about
was we all were very engaged
in the story about the football player,
Damar Hamlin,
that had that terrible situation
on the football field.
Many of us watched the video.
I happened to be watching it live
and where he went into, I believe
and Craig will kind of correct us
if I am wrong, cardiac arrest.
And they had the proper emergency folks
there that could help them.
And it looks like, you know, he lived.
He hopefully makes a very good recovery.
And the reason I wanted
to talk to Craig about that is because
Craig actually started his own charity
that deals with that.
So Craig Goldenfarb
from Gold Law in Florida.
Tell us a little bit about your charity.
Good morning, Bob.
I'm Craig in Florida, and I'm an attorney,
a personal injury attorney.
And I had a couple of things
lead up to starting the charity in my life
that all came together,
kind of inspiring me
to start a charity in .
So I was a younger personal injury
attorney, and I got given a case
where an year old boy died at school
and he died on the on the flag
football field.
So people just thought he passed out
or, you know, was over dehydrated
and they had a defibrillator at the school
and they didn't bring it to the scene.
And because they didn't bring it
to the scene, this poor young boy died.
I started handling one
or two or three cases like that
involving the issue of a defibrillator.
And then in the meantime,
I'm I've been a soccer player all my life.
And in my thirties, I witnessed two soccer
players, adults die in front of me.
All of a sudden, cardiac arrest
on a soccer field.
And so all these things came to fruition
about the same time.
So about five, ten years ago
I decided that, hey,
something could be done
about people dying.
And when I started looking at it,
it had a lot to do with defibrillators
and how effective they were.
So I started
a charity called Heart of the Game.
And Heart of the Game gives away
free defibrillators to youth sports clubs,
you know, like softball, baseball, soccer,
and gives away
free training for a year on CPR
and how to use their AEDs.
So we've given away over of these
defibrillators already in Florida.
We mostly focus in Florida,
but that's the charity part of the game.
Wow. That's great, Craig.
And I can tell you about we actually had
a local story right here in my local town,
they call it.
They have a a charity that's come about
with it, too, called London Strong.
And it's almost the exact same story
you're saying about the football.
This was a gymnastics player.
She was actually at a large water park,
I think, and they had the defibrillator
but weren't properly trained on it.
And it's just a terrible story.
This young girl, you know, in
very good health, very popular
young girl and kind of the same story.
So these are the situations that come up
and, you know, so talk about that
when you have a situation.
How did this come about?
What's the origin story
of how this came about
and how these cases
what type of cases is this
and what does it look like And like,
what geographic area do you cover?
Well, as far as my practice,
we cover defibrillator cases
across the entire United States.
And one of the reasons is
because I created this niche area of law.
And then I'm a member
of American Association for Justice,
and we formed a little committee,
a subcommittee on this area of law.
So my firm's probably done more of it
than most firms in the United States
because we niched it and the facts
are that to people
a year will have a sudden cardiac arrest,
which some people call heart attack.
And that's when your heart stops beating.
And it's called sudden cardiac arrest.
And of those up
to , per year are kids.
Kids and the kids, it usually happens
because they have some congenital
heart defect that nobody knows about
because kids don't get EKGs,
echocardiograms, electrocardiograms
regularly as part of a checkup.
So , kids die a year
and most of those are while doing sports.
So my goal with this
charity was to have an AED available
for kids and adults
that are watching their kids.
And, you know,
sometimes as soccer dads and soccer moms,
we get our heart elevated, too.
Yeah.
So my goal was to place these,
you know, in the Snack Shack or wherever
on the golf cart at a lot of sports
clubs have golf carts that drive around
so they can put them wherever they want.
And we actually help them design
their implementation plan.
When we give away a free defibrillator.
So that's the goal, is to prevent
these deaths from occurring with
timely emergency treatment.
You know, when it comes to lawyers,
I think sometimes it's interesting.
People have different opinions on lawyers.
But one of the things I had a professor,
an undergrad actually, who was a lawyer,
and he talked about how, you know,
we can use the law
and use the court system
to actually improve society.
And I think that's one of the things that
you're kind of talking about here to say
these are organizations,
large organizations, universities, schools
need to know that they need to be trained
and not just have the equipment,
which I have a lot of them here,
but not just have the equipment,
but know how to use it.
And I think that's kind of the point
of having the court system
in some of the cases that
you take is to say, okay,
this needs to get fixed.
We need to have better awareness
and better training on
the use of these things.
Because imagine with Damar Hamlin
that if they had the staff there,
they had the equipment,
but nobody knew how to use it properly,
it would have been even much greater.
Tragedy.
Yeah, liability is one of the major blocks
for me for entities
having these devices, because the first
objection is we're going to get sued.
Nobody's going know how to use it,
the batteries are going to go dead, etc.
So as part of my duty as a business owner,
I believe it's my responsibility
to have an AED. That's my feeling.
And if that comes with the battery
charging and once a year maintenance,
which it does with the companies
I buy from most of the companies
who sell you them,
they sell you a service package.
And the analogy I can use is just like
your fire, your fire extinguisher.
We all have to have the fire
extinguisher by code.
We have to have it serviced
X times per year by code.
I would like to see across the country
defibrillators required in businesses
just like fire extinguishers are.
That's my goal.
And the training is not hard.
We redo it every six months
because we have new employees.
The companies that sell you
these defibrillators,
they have programs that you can purchase
of safety,
maintenance and training
that are not expensive.
I have three
I have three of them in my office
at various levels of my office space.
So I lecture a lot about liability issues,
trying to convince
business owners, hey, you might get sued
if you don't have one at all, right?
And if you do have one,
you might save a life.
And I'm more worried about saving lives
than litigation.
And yes, there's litigation
that comes out of this,
but there's litigation that comes out
of every dangerous thing in your office
or your business.
So if you have a fire extinguisher,
you should have a defibrillator.
Well, and, you know, as a business owner,
there's so many things to think about.
And, you know, I can understand that
a small business owner and honestly,
we didn't have one of these
until I heard you start talking about it
and you start talking about it is like,
why don't we have one of these?
And then we got one. And we said, okay.
Everybody started looking at it
and being very scared of it.
Well, of course it came with training
and of course we do the continuing
training and honestly, it was a very good
teambuilding exercise too.
It wasn't just a okay,
we need to all know,
get trained and go through this chore
of getting trained on it.
It was a very positive experience
to get everybody trained,
and I think everybody kind of
feels a little bit better about it
because I do work with an older population
and the idea that we didn't have one
is kind of shocking.
But a lot of us
never think about these things.
So the work that you're doing is really
great from the standpoint of awareness
and why it's so important
and making sure that we really, you know,
not just have them,
but there's training on it.
So I am just really impressed
with all that you're doing on this.
Tell us a little bit more about it.
Where else should these things be?
I mean, I know you said in every business,
like obviously on the sports
field, do you think they are
most used in sports?
What most lawyers and most people
don't know is that every single state
in the United States actually has,
as part of their Good Samaritan act,
a section on defibrillators.
And nobody's ever read it or seen it,
because you have to find
the Good Samaritan Act
and then you have to go to whatever
subsection deals with defibrillators.
So there are websites if you just
Google it, you know, state laws
on defibrillators and you can find out
what the law is in your state.
And I know Michigan is a state
that requires them at certain locations.
So it has to go state by state.
I'm a little surprised at Florida
because they don't require them
in gyms in Florida.
Florida
has the oldest population in the country
and everybody exercises everywhere.
So they're required in gyms in about ten
or states Right now.
My opinion is they should be required
in gyms in every state.
There is federal legislation
that says they do have to be in airports.
That's why you see them in every airport.
You have to be on airplanes since
and every federal building.
And that was the Cardiac Survival
Act of that was passed, I believe,
whoever was president back
then, maybe Clinton, I don't remember.
So that's been there for about years.
So there's federal level legislation
and then every state has their legislation
within the Good Samaritan Act.
I didn't know any of this
until I handled my first case
and I had to learn this stuff.
So my opinion is the more progressive
the state is in mandating these,
the better.
The problem is that a lot of you know,
a lot of Chamber of commerce and state
organizations in Congress
don't like mandates on businesses.
And I feel that that's a shame because
sometimes you need to mandate safety.
And this is a safety issue.
Like you said,
about the fire extinguisher.
I mean, they certainly would mandate
a fire extinguisher and yeah,
I don't know what the statistics are,
but I would suspect that, you know,
the heart attacks are going to be
as big of a risk from a standpoint
of what's going to happen on a day to day
basis or cardiac arrest.
Absolutely.
I mean, fires, how many people are killed
by fire every year?
Probably not a bunch, but to
people die a year of sudden
cardiac arrest.
It's probably
a lot more than are killed by fires.
Yet we all have to have fire
extinguishers.
So it doesn't make any sense
that they're not required in many places.
No, a lot of business owners.
And in fact,
when I started handling these cases,
I said, “Why didn't
you have one?” And most business owners
Say “I couldn't afford it.”
Or I thought about it
or I never thought about it,
but actually they're quite affordable now.
They're about dollars.
And that's not a lot for many businesses.
It is a lot for some gym owners,
but it's part of doing a gym business,
in my opinion.
That's where people's hearts are elevated.
Most of the national chains like L.A.
Fitness and others, they do have them
even though they don't have to,
because they realize
that's the standard of care, Right?
So the standard of care, in my opinion,
needs to keep going up and up and up.
Most golf courses now have them somewhere
in the drive shack or wherever.
Most sporting venues.
I've had cases against
about five different stadiums.
University of Central Florida and others
where there was a failure
and someone passed away
due to a heart attack at a stadium.
So now all stadiums have them,
but they're not mandated in most places,
even though the cost has come way down
from about $, to about $.
You know, it seems
to me that it's a cost of doing business.
But I want you to talk a little bit
about the use of them.
And what I mean by that is
I'll admit to you, I was a bit intimidated
when you start talking about it.
And I thought, “Oh,
now we've get trained on using this
and I'm worried about it.”
I first I was worried about cost,
and then you made it clear that
that was not going to be cost prohibitive.
But then I was thinking, “Oh,
I have to learn how to use this.”
And so I understand that
there's kind of two types of the
defibrillators,
the one that the medical staff use
and then one for us average folks, that is
actually really pretty easy to use.
So can you kind of describe
the two types for us?
Sure, the types that the I don't know
how old everybody else is listening,
but there is an old TV show.
I think it was an emergency
one or something.
It's like you say, clear and you
put the paddles and you shock the person.
That's similar to what they still have.
It's rather complicated
and it takes some skill to learn it.
But that's the EMS, the emergency rescue
people are trained on that.
The one next to you is an automated
external defibrillator that's portable
and it's kind of like
we'll call it the consumer model.
And it's there's lots of studies
that have come out in the last ten years
that shows you have to
have the
intellect of a nine year old, nine year
old to be able to figure it out
with the prompts that are on the box and
the prompts that are on the device itself.
So I'll take you through it.
So the first blockade is fear
because everybody's freaking out
because someone is on the floor.
So you've got to actually mentally
take yourself to that place.
Someone just had a sudden cardiac arrest
and they're on the floor.
Everybody's running around.
Somebody is calling
and everybody says, “Where's the IED?”
I think we know where it is.
So someone knows where it is,
and then someone has to go get it.
So these are all fear points.
Who's going to go get it?
All right, then the person who gets it
says,
I'm not touching this person,
I'm going to kill them.
So everybody's panicking
and someone has to be calm and say,
I'm taking this on and open the box
and unzip the thing.
I mean, all of these are fear points.
So this whole thing, Bob,
these are all fear points.
Opening
the door, taking it out, looking at
it. And then you look at the thing
and you see that it’s a ZOLL model,
which is a good model,
and you have to unzip it
and these are all points of fear.
And meanwhile, your friend is sitting
there on the floor dying.
Right? So who's going to do it?
And if it's a female,
it does involve taking off their shirt.
“Oh, my gosh, we're going to take off
the shirt of a female.” With a guy,
it's usually less of a problem,
but there's a pair of scissors in there
in the kit.
So who's going to use the scissors
to cut the guy's shirt
or who's going to rip the guy's shirt off?
He's going to die.
So these are all fear points.
So you take the thing out
and then it's got pictures on it.
Most of these have pictures of two pads
and where they go on the body.
So you got to open the thing.
I mean, each one of these things is scary
and then you drop it just right.
And you're so nervous at that point
because the adrenaline is flowing,
you definitely are going to drop it
and then you get the thing out and
there's a picture on it of where it goes.
And so you've got to place the pads
and then you're scared.
Who's going to deliver the shock?
Well, the good thing these days
is that you don't make the decision
as to the shock being delivered.
The pads that are placed on the body
analyze the heart rhythm,
and the machine says most of these say out
loud in a voice that you can hear.
“Take your hands off.
If you're doing CPR, stop CPR,
take your hands off.”
And we are analyzing the rhythm.
It says it out loud.
And then after it analyzes the rhythm, it
the machine makes the decision
whether to administer a shock
and then it'll say out
loud, “You may resume CPR.”
and it's still monitoring the thing.
And then if it determines another shock
is needed, it says “Stop CPR,
analyzing
rhythm, take your hands off the victim”
and then it will deliver a second one
if needed.
While all of that is scary, it's easy.
Yeah.
According to the New England
Journal of Medicine article,
you have to be nine years old,
have the intellect of a nine year
old to follow the prompts.
So I hope we all have the intellect
of a nine year old.
Well, and that was it.
I was shocked at how easy it was.
I assume that there was going to be some
decision making and there really isn't.
It's just follow the instructions.
I had a coach many years ago that would
say, “Just go dumb.” You’re overthinking
this, just go dumb, do the thing
that it says, just do what you're told.
And often that's good advice for life is
just do what you're told.
And it doesn't require a lot of thinking.
I mean, if you look at the thing off your
right shoulder, Bob, the laminated thing
that, you know, if you hold that up,
you'll see that’s
some instructions
probably or some maintenance instructions.
I mean, it's that simple.
It's basically telling you what to do.
And if those aren't the instructions,
then they're on the device itself.
It literally has three things.
One, turn the AED on.
Number , to place the pads and it shows
exactly where to place the pads.
Number three, press the shock button.
And then when you press the shock button,
then it gives you verbal instructions
from there.
And it's just mostly it's
to, you know, step away.
And so it is much
easier
than I would have ever imagined it to be,
which is a very important point,
because like you say,
fear, We got to move past that.
I think that there's just
unfortunately, it might be sort of that
culture of expectation
of the TV shows that we watched.
And, you know, everybody, you know,
jumping away and the body jumping.
And none of that happens when. Right.
You use one of these machines
and there's just sort of a cultural
expectation based on the movies
and TV shows that we've watched.
Yeah. I mean, it's simple.
The combination of CPR
plus a defibrillator
leads to a % survival rate, %
survival rate,
if done within the first to minutes
after they drop.
Let me say that again.
If done within the first to minutes
after the person hits the floor,
if you use CPR and an AED
you're going to have a % survival rate
for every minute
that goes on beyond minutes,
the survival rate decreases by %.
And what's
interesting is the national response
time for ambulances
nationally,
if you average it is to minutes.
That's too late.
So if you think that the ambulance
is going to come between
and minutes,
the person might be already dead.
So the responsibility in my head
is those first magical minutes.
And the only people there
for the first magical minutes are us.
Very important.
Talk to us a little bit about you
mentioned about maintenance
in the battery and all of that.
Is there an expiration?
How often do
these things have to be replaced?
How often do they need to be serviced?
I know you've spoken a little bit
about it, but give us a longer.
It's pretty easy for me
is that I pay someone to do it.
I pay the company to do it,
and they make money off this.
Just like the fire extinguisher guys
who come and check your fire extinguisher,
you probably have a laminated little thing
on your fire extinguisher.
Right.
And it says the last time it was checked,
if you've ever looked
at that little laminated thing
and it says who checked it
from what company, and when you
get the same thing for your defibrillator,
a little laminated card
and the company that you hire is
the same company that you bought it from
will come twice a year.
And check the battery,
replace the battery if necessary
and they check the pads
and then you're good to go.
So all I do is I look at that card
and make sure that, you know, my office
administrators
making sure they're coming twice a year
because
I don't want to I don't want it to die.
Right.
So that's it. It's that simple.
It's whoever you buy it from,
they're going to offer you a service plan.
And my service plan is like $
a year, literally $ a year.
And if they need batteries
to replace the battery.
But that's like every three years. Yeah.
So the ongoing cost of this
to possibly save someone's
life is $ a year.
That's a joke.
And, you know, these are standard things
that businesses always have to deal with.
I mean, we have the fire the fire
administrator I can't remember the title,
but the fire chief come by
or one of his employees
to check our fire extinguishers.
You know, that was part of
living in the town that we live
in, that it was required and we know that.
And we know that we have to have
those fire extinguishers serviced.
And it's just you know,
it's just a part
of every business operation is
they're going to have some things
that they've got to make sure required
maintenance, your copier, your computers.
You know, everything requires
some form of maintenance.
This is just like anything else.
Well, what's funny is
since I speak so much on the liability and
helping people understand
why this is something they should have,
one of the few things
I think I say is who's the person
most likely to drop of a cardiac arrest
in your officer?
And everybody points at themselves
and I'm like, okay,
so if you're not doing this
for your clients or customers
and you're not doing it
for your coworkers, do it for yourself,
because who's the most stressed out person
in your company? You.
So if you want to save your own life,
which is the most likely life to be saved,
do this for yourself. Yeah.
And then when I say that to a lawyer,
he's like,
“Yeah, I'm the guy who's going
to have the heart attack.
Maybe I should buy this thing.”
So I think that usually lands
pretty well on business owners.
So I know you've talked about this,
but I just want to dig into it
a little bit further because I
you know, you hit the right on the head
about the fear and just the biggest fear
I think people are going to have
is I'm going to use it wrong.
Am I going to be sued
because I used it wrong?
And I think you've already answered it,
that it's not
really possible to use it wrong
as long as you follow the instructions
which a nine year old can do,
but talk about that kind of liability.
Sure.
So the statutes that the laws
in under your Good
Samaritan Act, they all had one paragraph
dealing with defibrillators
and they're all really protective
of what is called a Good Samaritan.
So if you attempt to use the AED
and the person still dies, first of all,
they were going to die anyway.
So in personal injury law,
we call that a lack of causation,
which is that they're going to die
if you don't touch them
and if you touch them and they did die,
there's no causation.
In other words,
what you did did not cause them to die.
They were going to die anyway.
So you didn't
cause them to die by screwing up.
And even if you
even if the machine screws up
like has a technical difficulty,
that's a product liability case.
And I've had those too.
So it's the machine that screws up,
not you. Right.
So there's a lot every Good
Samaritan act in the United States
as a provision protecting the lay user.
In other words, the non expert
non doctor user from liability.
I can get around that.
If the battery was dead, get around it.
Meaning I can have a successful lawsuit
if the battery was dead
or you didn't maintain it.
Or maybe if you didn't have one at all.
I have never in years
had a case against an individual
for their screwing up
the usage during a sudden cardiac arrest.
And I've done dozens of these cases,
so it's really protected for the user.
The business.
On the other hand, that's who sometimes
I have to target because they screwed up
in the implementation
or they locked it up in the closet,
or the one guy who knew how
to use it was off that day
or nobody knew where it was.
These are common facts scenarios,
so those are easy to prevent,
to be candid, all these fact scenarios.
But they happen all the time.
And sadly, that keeps me in business
for that area of law.
I'd rather that area as well go away
for me, which is that lives are saved.
Well, that's the thing, is that I
you know, this is not
one of those things where you train
one person who might be on vacation.
This was very easy to train
my whole staff.
We had everybody
there and brought in some donuts
which weren't very heart healthy.
And it was, you know,
it was we actually had
a very enjoyable time with it.
I think we had a potluck afterwards,
if I remember right.
And to do
that every six months or so,
that guarantees that somebody there
is going to be comfortable
with the process and using it.
And it's just good.
It's good business, it's good employee
morale
to know that we're concerned about this
and that we're making sure
that we're protecting each other
and protecting our clients that come in
and everything else.
So I'm really glad
you turned me on to all of this because,
you know, it seems like this should be
something that is in a code or, you know,
just like the fire code
and things like that.
I really think mandates
should occur in some situations,
just like they mandate fire extinguishers
and they mandate, you know, whatever
other things we got to deal
with as business owners,
I think it's a cost of doing business,
and I think it's a valid cost
of doing business, especially for certain
industries.
Now, office buildings,
there are a few states that require them.
And for every company in an office
building
that's , square feet or bigger,
that's interesting.
And it goes by the size of the building.
Some of them have
them just required in gyms
like New York has that.
Every state
requires them a certain level of schools.
So in Florida, if you're a member
of the Florida Athletic Association,
which all public schools are a member of,
you must have an AED
and an AED plan, which means
they have to have several AEDS.
So there are companies that administer
compliance with that in school.
So they are in all schools
in the United States, for the most part,
private schools are a different issue
because they're not required
in private schools.
So my charity has given away
a few to private schools
because if your kids in private school,
you may want to ask
because they should be in schools, too,
in private schools as well.
And the next question that comes often is
“How do I buy one of those things?” Well,
I mean, whenever I think, “Where
do I find one?” The word Amazon
always pops into my head.
Right? These days
you can find anything on Amazon.
You can
if you want to get it with no training.
But my suggestion is
you simply do a Google search,
put in the name of your city
and put “Buy defibrillator Cleveland”
or “Buy defibrillator Michigan”
and you will get
because all these companies
do really good SEO work,
you will
get a company in your city
that sells them and trains.
It's that simple.
Buy defibrillator, name of city
and you will get a company
and they will sell the training.
So it's that easy.
And you should be paying anywhere
between to bucks maximum.
And they give you a choice.
The one that Bob bought
there is in a glass case
and it often gets mounted on the wall.
And then there's a sign that comes with it
oftentimes
that you've seen in the airports
that says, AED.
So that lets people know where it is.
There's also portable models and we give
the portable models to the sports clubs
because they're usually carrying it
around on that golf cart or the
or the little car they have.
Or if they don't,
then if it's a small sports club,
they'll put it in the snack shack.
So there's portable models
and there's stationary models
and you can pretty much order
anything you want.
The one you have, Bob I have
that is a similar one
and we have it posted on the wall.
It's hung up like a fire extinguisher.
So where do you get it?
Google. How much does it cost?
About to dollars.
And who do you get it from?
Whatever company comes up on Google,
they're all good in your city
or your town.
So those are a lot of the questions I get.
How much does it cost,
who provides the training, etc.
So I want to get rid of all
those barriers, which is how much money?
How does this work?
Where do I get it? Who gets trained?
And we do training twice a year
because we get new employees
or employees get fired or leave
or come on board.
And even that's
part of the service package.
We paid for the service package
that includes twice a year training.
So all the hows and whys are really easy
answers to this whole thing.
None of them are complicated.
As your coach said a long time ago,
you know, dumb it down or whatever.
And it's true.
This is this is really easy to accomplish.
Well, and you
never know where things are going to lead.
Our trainer, they came in and did
the training has referred us a few cases
since then. So
you never know.
Absolutely.
Well, it's a guy I use for our training
is the guy who's partnered
with my charity
to provide the defibrillators at cost.
So he gets them
and gives him to sell them to our charity
at cost and makes no profit,
which is absolutely wonderful.
So we can get them for about bucks
because that's at cost,
which is fantastic.
So, you know, raising awareness is great.
And you may find that
there's a charity in your state.
There's charities
like this in every state.
And the sad sort of sad thing
is most of these charities
like mine are begun
because someone lost their child.
Right?
And when you lose your child and you're
looking for some way to let their legacy
go on, if you lose your child
to sudden cardiac arrest,
you may start a foundation or a charity
to raise money to save other children
from losing their lives.
So most of the charities I've seen across
the United States are run
by parents, who have lost their child.
And I'm a member of an organization
called Parent Heart Watch.
Parent Heart Watch.
It's hundreds and hundreds of parents,
even thousands across the nation,
who have lost a child due
to sudden cardiac arrest.
I'm on their board and it's a it's a sad
but great website and it's
hundreds of people who've lost their kids
to sudden cardiac arrest.
It was started by a woman
in Orlando, Florida, who lost her son.
And that's the national organization
that all the companies are,
sorry, all the charities are kind
are members of the Parent Heart Watch.
And it's that's
just such a special organization.
And to go and hear those stories, you're
not only have people have lost their kids,
but you have survivors in that group.
So a 14 year old will get up and say,
“I'm here today because two years ago
I had a softball hit me in the chest
and they got to me within minutes.
And that's all I remember.
I remember waking up at the hospital
and I'm now .
I would have never made it to 14
unless there was an AED.”
So that website is Parent Heart Watch.
ParentHeartWatch.com
That’s the survivors and my
my charity is Heart of The Game.
so it's Heartgame.org and game dawg
and we have a couple of golf
tournaments a year we have one in West
Palm Beach, Florida, one in Orlando,
Florida where we raise funds.
But if you're if you're generous
and you're feeling inspired,
you can make a donation.
That’s Heartgame.org
We take donations of any amount
and 100% of the proceeds
go to funding defibrillators.
We have no staff.
We have no paid employees.
We have me and our board.
And we will send the defibrillator
to your location.
And we only handle Florida right now.
But if you're looking for one
to be donated to your kid's sports club,
do a Google search the same one,
and you'll probably get that.
If you add the word
charity to the Google search,
you will find a charity in your state
where you can
get a free one for your sports club.
Just like mine.
Every state has an organization like mine,
and it's usually run
by the parents
of someone who lost their kid.
Well, that's really great.
And the great work that you do.
Craig, I appreciate everything you do.
Thanks for coming on the podcast today.
I know a lot of the folks that are
listening are going to be listening
on the audio version only,
and I know we've had some references
to some visual aids there,
so if you're interested and want to see,
you can find us on YouTube
or on our website at MannorLawGroup.com.
Or YouTube.
Just search Mannor Law.
And thanks so much for coming on.
Appreciate everything that you do
Craig, is one of the most generous lawyers
that I know. And thanks for everything.
You're welcome.
Bob it was an honor
and I'm glad to be able
to spread the word and some awareness and
save some lives.
Well, thanks for listening to Advice
From Your Advocates.
Don't forget to subscribe
and we'll see you next time.