Senior Project

As a student-athlete genetically predisposed to sudden cardiac arrest, the memory of the sudden death of 16-year-old Quentin Brown from heart failure during a 1996 basketball game at the North Carolina high school she now attends has stayed with Cynthia Patterson.

So when the Smithfield-Selma High School senior picked a career in cardiology for her senior project, she set an ambitious goal: raise enough money to put an automatic external defibrillator in each of Johnston County's six high schools so that no more student athletes would die from SCA.

Raising Money

To raise money, Patterson - who continues to play volleyball, basketball and volleyball despite inheriting from her mother a heart condition that puts her at greater risk of cardiac arrest - wrote letters to individuals and businesses, knocked on doors, and made presentations from Johnston County to New Jersey.

"She is very personable and can talk to anybody," Cynthia's mom, Jean, told me. She is so very right.

While most donations were in the $20, $50, $100 range, a $6,000 matching contribution this past summer by the county commissioners put Patterson's total at more than $12,000.

MomsTeam Helps

On her way with her mother and sister to see their cardiologist in Boston, Patterson met with MomsTeam's CEO and Founder, Brooke de Lench, who told her about MomsTeam's Save A Child's Life: An AED For Every Team campaign with Teams of Angels which makes AEDs available at a substantial discount.

Because of the program, Patterson was able to purchase more units - 11 units in all - allowing for placement of one AED in each high school with the others traveling with athletic teams.

"I was impressed with Cynthia's energy and commitment to getting AEDs into schools," said de Lench. "Like Cynthia, I look forward to a day in the not-to-distant future when an AED is at every youth sports event in this country and, instead of reading in the newspapers about deaths of our children from SCA, we will read instead about lives saved because of AEDs."

Starting A Movement

Not content to rest on her laurels, Patterson hopes to encourage a movement to buy more - for out-of-town games and for the middle schools. "I'm trying to challenge other schools to get them."

If you would like to help Cynthia by making a donation:

SSS Sports Medicine
700 Booker Dairy Rd
Smithfield, NC 27577

Article Updated July 6, 2006