HUBBARD — While others were preparing for Halloween, one Hubbard resident was fighting for a cause close to his heart.

Trumbull County CPR instructor Michael Kerr was in Washington, D.C. last week to urge Congress to fund the HEARTS Act, bipartisan legislation designed to ensure schools are prepared to respond to a cardiac emergency through the funding of Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs).

Kerr, alongside other advocates, was there on behalf of the American Heart Association, a non-profit organization aiming to fight heart disease and stroke through research, policy and public education.

Kerr said Wednesday that the HEARTS Act was introduced more than a year-and-a-half ago in response to Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffering cardiac arrest during a Monday night football game against the Cincinnati Bengals.

However, when the bill was passed, there was no money appropriated toward it.

Kerr recalled the story of Laura Brown, a nurse from Wauseon, a city several hours from Hubbard. Brown was in Kerr’s group, which was in charge of going to House representatives and senators and making the pitch for funding the bill.

“She gave us the true story of a 17-year-old wrestler who dropped over dead during warmups — and it took 30 minutes for the ambulance. There was no AED in the school and there was no one trained in CPR,” Kerr said. “I was appalled, because in northeast Ohio, we have a consortium with the local hospitals, Cleveland, all the way down to Mercy (Health) in Akron and got some grants and funding and paid for a lot of defibrillators initially to be put in schools.”

Kerr said his group went back and forth, walking between two members of the House of Representatives and two of the Senate to see all of the Ohio representatives they were supposed to see.

However, the representatives weren’t in their offices because of the government shutdown.

“Outside the Capitol building, there are 65 black SUVs parked, right at the Capitol, and those are for the people who are voting to keep the government open or closed,” Kerr said. “They’re not in their office, so all the lobbyists / senior aid analysts, whoever works for them, because if you look at these congressmen, they have 31 staffers in Washington and they have 31 in Ohio.”

Kerr said his group repeated the same thing to them, explaining that they were advocates and what they wanted the representatives to do.

“Most of them were very attentive; they wrote it down. ‘What can we do, this congresswoman is on board with that, this one’s new, he’d like to get on a bill and sponsor something to make it good for them,'” Kerr said.

Kerr said he does get some correspondence back from individuals such as Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and other representatives, who have pointed out that money is tight and the government is shut down, but they were still supporting the initiative.

“It’s a good deal, but it’s a shame that a football player has to drop over dead on national TV for people to wake up,” Kerr said.

EXPLAINING THE NEED

In respiratory cases, Kerr said survival rates are dictated by the minute.

“If you can get a defibrillator and CPR to a person in less than three to four minutes? Somewhere around a 93.3% survival rate. Most of those are dictated in the hospital,” he said. “Because we have code teams and response teams and they have all these things in place. Outside, it’s very hard to compete with that three to four-minute response time.”

Kerr said the survival rate decreases by 10% for each minute following the fourth one.

“The brain starts dying in four minutes without oxygen. Six to 10 minutes, irreversible brain damage has occurred,” he said.

In the case of the 17-year-old wrestler, who went 30 minutes waiting for an ambulance, Kerr said he was brain dead for four days before being pulled off the machines.

“I’m not Jesus, that’s not Lazarus; it’s very hard for me to raise people from the dead. As a paramedic — which I am — I can give breathing tubes and IVs and drugs and all this stuff if you’re pumping on that chest,” Kerr said. “You’re buying me time, you’re keeping that brain alive. And if you have an AED to give a shock to the heart that’s in an arrhythmia called ventricular fibrillation, you’re helping me, you’re buying me time.”

Kerr, a CPR instructor with 36 years of experience, said his passion began because of his daughter, who has had four open heart surgeries at varying ages.

“Myself, my wife and my whole family — daughter and two sons — are all CPR instructors,” Kerr said. “We became instructors because we couldn’t find a babysitter who knew CPR, having a daughter with heart defects.”

Kerr said his daughter was born with a defect called tetralogy of fallot, a combination of four heart defects present at birth and formally called “blue baby death.” He said his daughter was transported to University Hospitals in Cleveland hours after birth and had open heart surgery a month later.