When Valencia High School sophomores Nessa Santistevan and Lucy Elderd decided on their project to help spread community awareness from their Valencia Medical Science Academy class, they quickly realized there was not enough awareness of automated external defibrillators.
Elderd said Valencia Medical Science Academy is a part of Health Occupations Students of America, or HOSA.
“For our project, we wanted to do community awareness, which is to choose a subject either physical or mental and educate the community about something that’s not very recognized,” Elderd said.
She added that they had just learned how to do CPR and use AEDS, so Elderd and Santistevan thought that would be the best way to go with their project.
After they chose their focus, they decided to reach out to the Santa Clarita Valley Food Pantry to install an AED at the nonprofit’s Newhall location.
“So I received an email from Anesidora (Nessa) letting me know that she is in a program in school that helps nonprofits … and I asked her what my involvement would be … and she said ‘nothing, we would just, we would fundraise for it, install it, and do the whole thing for you,’ and I said, ‘OK.’ And that was it,” said Rachel Compton, director of community development at the SCV Food Pantry.
Santistevan said having an AED onsite is beneficial because it gives the person who is experiencing cardiac arrest a better chance of survival.
“It can be the ages between a kid to an adult, so it’s like a wide range. And again, before, I knew how to use an AED, I wouldn’t even know where it is or what it even does,” Santistevan said.
She added that she was proud of herself and Elderd and that it made her feel like she had done something unique.
“And we’re planning on continuing this after our project anyway. We’re hoping to grow to (and) get all the nonprofits to have the AED, and it grow into the state or even the country,” Santistevan said.
During the installation on Jan. 8, Elderd said she and Santistevan felt like “superheroes.”
“This lady, she’s a volunteer there, she came up to us, and she thanked us for doing this. Because she recently had lost a family member to cardiac arrest. And it was very, it was very big to us because it was very emotional … we’re so glad that we were doing it for a place that was, it’s doing such good things for the community,” Elderd said.
