VELCO Pres. Donleavy Life Saving Commitment

Herald Staff, May 11, 2006

Brendan McKenna

The Vermont Electric Power Co. is hoping to add almost 2,700 people trained in first aid to the streets of Rutland City — and that's just the start.

VELCO is working with the city schools to provide first aid training to all students in the city schools.

The program, to be administered through Rutland Regional Medical Center, will bring trained emergency medical technicians from Regional Ambulance Service to each of the city schools.

They will instruct the students in age-appropriate first aid techniques, ranging from basic accident instructions for the youngest children up to cardiopulmonary resuscitation and Heimlich training for high school students, said Jeff Wright, director of asset management for VELCO.

"We're starting with the city just because of the density … and because it's so close to (Regional) Ambulance," he said. "We'll branch out from there."

He said the hope is to get all students in the city trained before December, with the rest of Rutland County's students trained in the second half of the school year.

"That's just under 10,000 students," he said. "Then we'll keep moving. We hope in four or five years we'll catch the entire state."

The ambitious initiative is the idea of VELCO President John Donleavy, who has been a proponent of the Save A Life Foundation since its inception in the early 1990s, Wright said.

The foundation developed the instructional programs for students in response to a fatal car crash in 1992 in Illinois in which the foundation's founder lost a daughter because none of the bystanders knew basic first aid techniques.

Donleavy said he thinks the goals of the foundation fit especially well in a rural state like Vermont.

"The whole concept is training non-professionals to be able to help in emergency situations … basically applying first aid and life-saving techniques until the professionals get there," he said. "Now that I've come to Vermont and my family and I have settled in, I realized this would be an ideal support for emergency services. Picture the average time it can take for emergency services to arrive at the scene. It would be ideal to have school children or people at the scene able to help until they arrive."

Donleavy added that the training also exposes children to local emergency technicians as role models.

"I think there are a lot of benefits," he said. "I also have two school-aged children, girls who are now 14 and 16, and I think a lot of the time about the training they should have. Being a parent it helps put it in perspective."

Donleavy added that VELCO's role will be more leading the charge than doing all of the work setting up the training, which Wright said runs about $10 per student.

"We're just getting the ball rolling," he said. "We'll be reaching out to the Rutland corporate community to get them to sponsor the schools.

"Once the organization is up and running it's pretty self-supporting," he said.

Although there still are many details yet to be worked out, the city School Board is enthusiastic about the idea.

"I think it's an excellent idea," said Peter Mello, a member of the board. "We did something similar when I was the principal at Neshobe (Elementary School), but not on the same scale.

"It's age-appropriate so the children experience whatever level is appropriate in life-saving measures. … It gives the children the knowledge to help, take some emergency measures and maybe even save a life," he said.

Contact Brendan McKenna at brendan.mckenna@rutlandherald.com.