In 2002, Danica Canfield, the daughter of Betsy Looney’s best friend, died after going into sudden cardiac arrest while at school.
“The ambulance took twenty minutes to arrive. If the school had been equipped with an AED [Automated External Defibrillator], her life could have been saved,” said Looney.
Looney was a school nurse at St. Gregory the Great, Virginia Beach, for 20 years, and is now the school nurse coordinator for the diocesan Office of Catholic Schools.
In 2023, Looney testified at the Virginia General Assembly in favor of the bill SB-1453, which now requires public schools in the state to be equipped with an AED and to develop an emergency response plan. Our 23 diocesan schools, said Looney, were ahead of the curve – all are equipped with AEDs.
“The most important thing we can do for our kids is to be prepared,” said Looney.
Now, three of our diocesan schools have taken the next step toward emergency preparedness, becoming certified by Project ADAM (“Automated Defibrillators in Adam’s Memory”) as Heart Safe Schools: Charlottesville Catholic School; St. John the Apostle, Virginia Beach; and The Blessed Sacrament Huguenot School, Powhatan.
Project ADAM is named for Adam Lemel, a student like Canfield who died at school after a sudden cardiac arrest.
The most recent school to earn the designation was Charlottesville Catholic, on Feb. 27. To gain the Heart Safe School designation, said school nurse Suzanne Queheillalt, the school needed more than a working defibrillator.
“Project ADAM makes sure you have a qualified team, and that the defibrillator is in an easily accessible place. We ran drills, added signage, and wrote up a Cardiac Emergency Response Plan,” she said.
Charlottesville Catholic is the first school in the Charlottesville/Albemarle area to be designated a Heart Safe School, and received a congratulatory visit from Dr. John Phillips, director of the Children’s Hospital of Richmond affiliate program to Project ADAM, on April 11.
While there was no AED on hand to save Canfield 23 years ago, another person in Looney’s life was able to avoid tragedy via the device, which delivers an electric shock to restore normal heart rhythm. Her husband, John, suffered a sudden cardiac arrest in 2021 and was saved with an AED at a Virginia Beach fire station.
“Schools should be a safe place,” said Looney. “If there’s something we can do to be prepared, why wouldn’t we do it?”