Connor Lonning

Just maybe a little bit of backstory, kind of how we got here.

So my sister, Moran Lawning, and brother-in-law, Alex Weber, had a healthy child.

And one day, my sister went to go pick him up at child care.

And the doors were wide open and EMS were vehicles were outside.

And she walks in and, and finds that her son is, is that they're working to revive him as, as he lays on, on, on the floor.

And they were scrambling to, to put an AED on him to try to resuscitate him.

And we got to this point then was realizing that the,

the importance of access and use of an AED is really, really time sensitive.

And the ability to be able to have one within arm's reach with someone that is trained and to be able to apply it in a timely manner can often be the difference between life and death.

Come to find out that...

every minute that goes by without the use of an AED during a sudden cardiac arrest, you have about a 10% less likelihood of survival.

And so when we decided that we wanted to do something in memory of Charlie, we realized that we wanted to do something that would make a measurable and sustainable impact.

The aha moment was when we found out that all child care facilities have to have licensed child care professionals.

And those child care professionals have to be not just CPR trained, but also AED trained.

And so we have in the state of Wisconsin, tens of thousands and across the country, possibly millions of people that are trained in CPR and AED use.

But the vast, vast majority don't have access to one.

So that was the gap that we felt like as community organizers and people that can dump gasoline on a fire and get things going, we realized that that was kind of our calling to dump that fuel on that fire and bridge that gap in between those who are trained and certified to use an AED

bridge that gap so that they actually have one sitting on a shelf or on a wall within reach in the time of need.

And so we've used our abilities to access the community.

Our partnerships have been key to our success.