February is Heart Month, and this year the American Heart Association is shining a light on a powerful truth: in a cardiac emergency, the first responder is often not someone in uniform — it’s an everyday person standing nearby.
Cardiac arrest can happen anywhere — at the gym, in the grocery store, even on the sidelines of a child’s soccer game. Yet bystanders step in only about 40% of the time, often because they’re unsure of what to do or don’t feel prepared.
The message of this year’s campaign is simple and empowering: you don’t need medical credentials to save a life. What you need is knowledge, confidence, and the willingness to act. It’s a reminder that heroism doesn’t always wear a badge — sometimes it looks like a neighbor, a parent, or a passerby who’s ready to help in a critical moment.
Shari Chun, an American Heart Association volunteer, Co-Founder of Riverside Heartsavers (a nonprofit dedicated to CPR and AED training and certification), and a registered nurse at Riverside Medical Clinic, where she performs nuclear medicine cardiac stress testing, discusses the importance of getting trained in hands-only CPR.