Less than 3 months ago, a Staples High School student suffered cardiac arrest while watching a soccer game.
Quick action by trainers and bystanders — including CPR, and the use of an AED by the father of a player — saved the teenager’s life.
An equally speedy response has brought dozens of AEDs — portable defibrillators — to every school in Westport.
The Adam Greenlee Foundation — named for another student brought back to life a year earlier — partnered with the school district and Westport PAL. Within weeks, they’d raised over $85,000.
Last week, 26 AEDs were installed in school gyms and other important locations. The one below was mounted near the Staples cafeteria.
Another 22 AEDs, with travel cases, were given to schools for use on field trips and sports events outside of Westport.
This spring, 17 more will be installed in outdoor cases, for athletic fields and recess areas. Ten others have been given to PAL, for use at sports events outside town.
It was an amazingly rapid — and crucial life-saving — community effort.
Just imagine: If the state Department of Transportation worked at this pace, the Merritt Parkway North Avenue bridge would already be repaired. The North Compo/Main Street/Clinton Avenue realignment would be finished. And the Bridge Street bridge renovation would be over and done, somehow pleasing every single Westporter.