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August 9, 2000 -- On Labor Day, 1992, Christina Jean Spizzirri was involved in a fatal car accident.  Had emergency first aid been rendered, Christina might have survived.  The following year, Carol Spizzirri, Christina's mother, founded the Save A Life Foundation (SALF) in an effort to prevent this tragedy from re-occurring.  The major focus of SALF is on the training of children in life saving first aid skills (LSFA).

Developing these LSFA programs earned the attention of physicians such as Dr. Henry Heimlich (creator of the Heimlich maneuver), and Dr. Peter Safar (father of CPR), both of whom serve as SALF medical advisors.  The curriculum is composed of a simple proven one-hour children's program Save A Life For Kids (age-appropriate for kindergarten through eighth grade), and a more comprehensive Bystander Basics for young adults.  These programs, and more, are taught by experienced Fire Fighters, Police and EMS professionals trained as SALF instructors. 

SALF has conducted post-training testing on the children who participated in its programs.  It has been established and documented that the children have retained an amazing ninety-seven percent of the LSFA skills taught by SALF.  Along with this retention of knowledge is an increased sense of confidence and willingness to help others in need.

The training SALF provides to children is educational in many ways.  First, as demonstrated by test statistics, children trained in LSFA skills feel far more confident to help another than they felt before the training.  Second, this training provides children with knowledge of what to do in real-life situations.  Third, as demonstrated by SALF programs, many children feel a deeper sense of responsibility to their individual families and communities since they now possess skills to assist those who are injured.

SALF has trained over 120,000 Illinois children in LSFA over the past eighteen months, and has become a line item in the state budget through the Illinois Department of Public Health. This training has been viewed as such a success that the Chicago Board of Education passed a resolution to include SALF's programs within their school curriculum for their 680 schools.  SALF is expanding their operations throughout Illinois and into other states with the help of local hospitals and EMS centers throughout the country. In addition, SALF, along with a number of other organizations were used to develop BELS (Basic Emergency Lifesaving Skills for Schools) guidelines.

Written by: Mitchell Newton-Matza (August 2000)