I’m watching my 12-year-old son Logan perform cardio-pulmonary resuscitation on an inflatable dummy named “Mini Anne.” My job is to count. Two breaths. Fifteen chest compressions. Check for breathing. Repeat.

My only real-life experience with CPR is a painful memory. My 8-year-old niece had an asthma attack and lost consciousness. I counted then, too. Two breaths. Fifteen chest compressions. Still not breathing. Repeat.  

Logan was a toddler then, asleep in the next room. I was very calm and performed CPR to the best of my ability, but I could not revive my niece. Neither could the paramedics.

After her death, I was consumed with questions: Did I do it correctly? Could I have prevented her death if I had practiced CPR more often? The emergency room doctors said her lungs had collapsed and my efforts were in vain, but I still felt responsible.

As soon as my kids reach their early teens, they receive CPR training. It’s an unwritten family rule. They take a course at scouts, at church or, in Holly’s case, at a babysitting class at the hospital. CPR was a requirement for my son Jordan during his years as a lifeguard in Tempe and Mesa.

At the ripe age of 12, Logan has had very little practice in CPR. But thanks to Dana Jirauch and the American Heart Association (AHA), I now trust Logan to save my life—or anyone else’s.

As director of workplace and corporate giving for the AHA, Jirauch has big plans. She wants to train every seventh grader in Maricopa County to perform CPR. That’s almost 43,000 potential lifesavers.

The kicker is something she calls the “multiplier effect.” Each student will take home a CPR Anytime kit and use it to train at least three additional family members.

The local classroom effort is part of a national movement; 47 similar programs are now in progress across the U.S. A similar program in Los Angeles showed the potential effect: every  participating student trained an average of seven or more people.

The CPR Anytime kit includes an inflatable manikin (Mini Anne), an instructional booklet and a 22-minute  DVD that teaches the core skills of CPR: pushing on the chest (compressions) and breathing for the victim (ventilation). It also shows how to recognize an emergency, check the victim for response and call 911.

“This way of learning CPR is a tremendously successful way to teach a large amount of people very quickly,” says Jirauch.

Why seventh graders?

“At this age, it’s still cool to learn CPR,” says Jirauch. “They have the desire to do it. They get excited and feel empowered by the information. They are used to technology that’s quick and visual.” And because each student has a practice manikin, “they’re not sitting around waiting for a turn to practice.”  

One great feature on Mini Anne is a tab that allows you to decide whether you’re practicing on an adult or child manikin. During our practice session, Logan set his Mini Anne tab to “child.” As he performed chest compressions, he listened for a “clicking sound” that indicated whether he was pushing on the chest hard enough.

“This is a lot harder than I thought,” Logan said, “even if it’s a little kid.”

By targeting kids and their families, the AHA is going straight to the “heart” of the matter. Sudies show that nearly 80 percent of cardiac arrest deaths occur at home where the bystander is typically not trained in CPR.

Schools across the Valley are requesting the CPR Anytime kits, Jirauch says, but the holdback is money. It will cost $1.1 million per year to teach CPR to every seventh grader in Maricopa County. That covers the cost of kits, shipping, instruction and evaluation.

The 22-minute program, which does not require a professional facilitator, is an ideal project for community organizations, like sports teams and scout troops. Kits can be purchased individually for $34.95 at americanheart.org/cpranytime. AHA staff and volunteers are  hoping that once the word gets out, parent-teacher organizations will undertake fundraising projects to provide the kits at their schools.

CPR Anytime is a non-certified program appropriate for “the vast majority of people who do not need to be certified to correctly perform CPR,” says Jirauch.

AHA statistics show that sudden cardiac arrest causes about 5,000 deaths in Arizona each year.

“Teaching kids about CPR is key to preventing even more deaths,” says Bentley Bobrow, M.D., medical director at the Arizona Department of Health Services’ Bureau of Emergency Services & Trauma System. “Everybody can do this, even kids!”

The AHA has set a national goal to train 20 million people by 2010, Jirauch says. “The way we’ll train the most people is by this CPR Anytime program. The ultimate goal is to get that kit home and share it with the family.”