HighBeam Research

Title: Working to save lives Victim's mom founds

group to promote first aid skills.(Neighbor)
Date: August 25, 2000 Publication: Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL) Author:
Kelly, John

In the nearly eight years that have passed since Carol Spizzirri's teenage
daughter died, the mother's life has been filled with tears, fortitude - and yet hope
for others.

On Sept. 7, 1992, 18-year-old Christina Jean Spizzirri bled to death after a car
accident, while police and bystanders watched helplessly without rendering aid.
Her mom will never know if Christina's life could have been saved had police
been trained in basic first aid.

A resident of Warren Township, Spizzirri has crusaded since the tragedy to try to
ensure as many people as possible learn basic life-saving skills. In the aftermath
of her successful effort to help change Illinois law, which now requires firefighters
and police to be trained in first aid, she also started and expanded the Save A
Life Foundation.

Since its conception in 1993, the state-supported foundation's 300 instructors

have taught 200,000 Illinois residents such skills as cardiopulmonary
resuscitation, the Heimlich maneuver and bleeding control - all of them basic first
aid skills that Spizzirri said should be common knowledge for all.

"I could not fathom the idea that police officers who are public servants did not
have these life-saving skills," Spizzirri said.

"I did some research and found out that school teachers, coaches and school
bus drivers didn't either, and these are all public servants that we entrust the lives
of our children to at least 10 hours a day."

Despite the intention to train adults, schoolchildren comprise the largest group of
those trained by Save A Life. More than 125,000 children in kindergarten through
high school have learned age-appropriate emergency skills through Spizzirri's
foundation since 1998.

By having emergency medical service professionals - including firefighters,

paramedics and police officers - instruct the children, Spizzirri said they
emphasize to the children what is needed most of them before help arrives.

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She added that through testing, the retention rate for the schoolchildren has been
found to average 97 percent three months after training.

For Spizzirri, some of the most rewarding moments have been those when she
was told trained students applied their skills to save another's life. Seven rescues
have been attributed to students trained by Save A Life, each of whom received
a congratulatory letter from the foundation's honorary chairman, the executive
producer of "Baywatch," David Hasselhoff.

Spizzirri's foundation recently received $50,000 in appropriations - $25,000 from

both state Rep. Ralph Capparelli, a Chicago Democrat, and state Sen. Walter
Dudycz, a Republican from Chicago, to give birth to a new facet of Save A Life -
the Blue Angels program.

Titled after a nickname for police, the program will use the state money to help
train Chicago police in life-saving skills so they may in turn instruct other officers,
as well as Chicago school children.

Chicago police officer Carlos Cortez is heading up the program, which he said
will look to train 50 officers as instructors starting at the end of August. The
eventual goal, he said, is to have the bulk of Chicago's 13,000 police trained in
these necessary skills.

"We're trying to put the goodwill on the streets, and the goodwill will spread,"
Cortez said, adding that the new instructors will begin teaching school children
around the middle of September.

Also on Spizzirri's agenda is a meeting at the end of this month with

representatives of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in
Washington to discuss making the program national.

"They are interested in honing our program within their agency to get federal
funds to start branches throughout the county," Spizzirri explained.

For Spizzirri, this is yet another stepping stone along a path she never intended
to take, toward a goal she never expected to realize. She remains hopeful that
her efforts will keep changing the lives of others, and save some along the way.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Paddock Publications