From 7,000 to Just 46 for Woodbury’s Hands-Only CPR Campaign

Woodbury Public Safety is nearing its goal of training 7,000 people in hands-only CPR.

There are only 46 left to go.

“And we have those scheduled,” said Angela Kain, firefighter/EMT.

Kain has been heading up the Take Heart Woodbury campaign since it launched Feb. 17, 2012.

At the outset, Kain thought would it would be easy to teach 7,000 people how to do hands-only CPR, which is done without mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

“This is a cakewalk,” she recalled thinking at the time.

But after a fast start, the initiative fell into a bit of a lull, Kain said. Woodbury Days helped get things back in gear, she said, and local schools have recently reached out to ask public safety officials to teach the method to students and staff.

“Wonderful things have been happening,” Kain said. “It seems like once we got the ball rolling, it kept going faster and faster.”

As of Tuesday, there was no official ceremony planned for No. 7,000, though Kain said she plans to get a picture of the person. For the most part, public safety is busy thanking those who participated—schools, local officials and the personnel who devoted their time, she said.

The program, Kain said, “really never ends.”

“There’s obviously a demand for it, so we’ll continue it in some capacity,” she said.

It’s been a lot of work over the past year, said Kain, who also thanked colleague Katie Cafferty for her help.

“What a whirlwind,” Kain said.

But the city is a safer place because of the hands-only CPR training.

“You’ve got 7,000 people—in case you collapse, you have people that know what to do,” Kain said. “That’s powerful.”

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