NEW YORK--Linda Cotter-Forbes, of Rhinebeck, New York, was recognized yesterday at an awards ceremony at the New York Athletic Club for winning first place in the first iRescU AED Scavenger Hunt Challenge. The Challenge was launched during the 2011 American Heart Association Conference in November. Linda reported the location of 37 AEDs during a 48-hour period.
She was highly motivated--her daughter, Kaitlin Forbes, survived sudden cardiac arrest at Rhinebeck, NY, High School in 2005, thanks to her school's foresight and preparation. Linda's efforts set a new world record for any one-person effort geolocating AEDs during a brief scavenger hunt.
"I am thrilled to have won the AED," said Linda, "as I have a true passion for ensuring that AEDs are widely available for public access. Our daughter, Kaitlin, is living proof that access to AEDs is not only important--it's the difference between life and death! AEDs are incredible lifesaving tools that nearly anyone can use to save a life."
iRescU is a new public health education initiative, led by Nadine Levick, MD, MPH, of the EMS Safety Foundation. The iRescU app, which is under development, will help save lives using crowd sourcing, cloud-based technology, and smartphones to geolocate AEDs. It will be available free on smartphones on all platforms in the near future.
Mary Newman, President of the Sudden Cardiac Arrest and a member of the iRescU global interdisciplinary team, presented Linda with her first place prize--an automated external defibrillator. The AED had been donated to the Foundation by Cardiac Science.
Kaitlin's story is featured in the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation's You Can Save a Life at School publication, which may be downloaded here.