Garrett Hawgood is, by his very nature, a lifesaver. In fact, the Niverville man has made saving lives one of his main objectives.
Hawgood’s business, Aim for Life, instructs people in CPR and first aid training. But his latest mission is to work towards a future where every building in every community is equipped with a key live-saving tool: an automated external defibrillator, better known as an AED. He says too many buildings—such as businesses, churches, and public facilities—don’t have them.
Together with his long-time friend and business partner, Kris Magnifico, Hawgood has pledged to donate one Zoll AED for every first aid and CPR class sold.
The Zoll AEDs that Aim for Life provides are the same ones used by the City of Winnipeg and in emergency vehicles around the province. He warns that people might be tempted to buy a less expensive brand at a department store, but not all AEDs are created equal.
“Zoll has technology in it that makes CPR better,” says Hawgood. “It tells you if you’re applying enough pressure to the chest, which they don’t all do.”
To better understand heart failure and the purpose of an AED, Hawgood likens the heart to a spinning top. As long as it’s spinning at full power, it’s working at peak efficiency. A heart that goes into cardiac arrest is like a top whose motion is slowing down. Soon it begins to wobble and shake. This, he says, is literally what happens to the heart. Eventually, the shaking stops as the heart stops. The AED’s job is to identify and respond during that brief period when the heart is shaking.
“If the AED can catch it during that unstable rhythm, chances are very good that the person can be revived,” Hawgood says. “But… an AED has to be on the person right away.”
Applying CPR can keep the heart in the wobble rhythm longer—until an AED can be located.
“If an AED finds the shaking of the heart… it passes electricity through the heart and stops it in the hopes that when the heart turns back on, it remembers what it’s supposed to be doing.”
Incidents of Medical Distress
Hawgood also works as a full-time firefighter for the City of Winnipeg and has been trained in paramedicine, so he understands the urgency of trying to save a person in medical distress.
On three separate occasions, he’s been called into action to perform CPR when he wasn’t on work duty. Once it was on his daughter, Keira, who suffers from a rare medical condition called CDKL5. Another opportunity arose when a complete stranger stopped breathing at a Mexican resort where Hawgood was vacationing. The last took place on a multifamily outing to an amusement park when his friend Steve collapsed after his heart stopped beating.
In each situation, Hawgood was thankful for his CPR training.
“They were all very scary,” says Hawgood. “It could happen to anyone, anywhere, at anytime. Nobody is protected.”
Hawgood says that, ideally, an AED needs to be applied to a failing heart within two minutes of the initial distress signal. But, too often, good AEDs can be hard to locate. One of the reasons is that a good AED unit comes at a cost of about $2,100.
“They had an AED at the amusement park, but it wasn’t working,” Hawgood says. “By the time an AED was on scene, it was 17 minutes. So for 17 minutes we did CPR on Steve.”
Thankfully, it saved the life of his friend, a seemingly healthy 42-year-old with no known history of heart problems.
Operation Heart Heal
n his spare time, Hawgood teaches others to do the same. Hawgood and Magnifico have been teaching CPR and first aid training under the Red Cross umbrella for the last four years. They also provide first aid standby services at local events and sell Zoll AED units.
Their latest initiative, Operation Heart Heal, has a dual goal: to make AED units readily available in every public building, public space, jobsite, and workplace in the region. Once achieved, their secondary goal will be to donate AEDs to people living in remote places, like First Nations communities.
“We make good money with our full-time jobs, so when it comes to this kind of thing we’re going to be making a little bit of money on the classes and the funds will go directly toward the donation of AEDs,” Hawgood says.
But in order to achieve this lofty goal, Hawgood hopes to partner with the local fire department, town, and business community. It’s a win-win scenario, he says, since every business owner, club, and organization should be providing CPR training for their people on an ongoing basis. As a matter of fact, Manitoba Workplace Safety and Health regulations require it.
While many qualified trainers are available, however, Hawgood and Magnifico are the only ones who will donate an AED to the business or organization that provides a group class. The team offers training onsite or in a local community centre and supplies the equipment necessary to hold the class. They also offer classes at the same price as other trainers.
The only stipulation, in order to make this grand gesture feasible, is that the class sizes has to meet a minimum number.
“I’m a huge advocate for everybody getting trained,” Hawgood says. “I’m hoping that this will entice people, because it really can help. I know from personal experience that you really don’t know when you’ll need to use it.”
Hawgood says that too many workplaces or clubs only have one or two people trained in CPR and first aid. But that one person can’t always be within two minutes of a cardiac arrest incident. Other times, they might freeze in the face of shock—or, worse still, be themselves the person in medical distress.
As well, training should be refreshed on an annual basis for all employees, because when a skill is rarely put to use, it is quickly forgotten.
Once a business or organization receives the free AED after the first course, they can choose to donate an AED with every proceeding course offered. These AEDs can then be donated to churches, non-profit organizations, members of the community who are at risk of heart failure, or vulnerable communities who don’t have access.
Remote Communities
First Nations communities are some of the first to come to mind. Hawgood and his partner have spent a fair bit of time offering classes in these remote communities.
“The first time I was on a reserve to teach, it really shocked me at how different it was,” says Hawgood. “Everybody thinks that everywhere you go in Canada is the same and everyone has access to the same stuff, but they don’t. The soft spot that I have for that group of people kind of started with my firefighting job in Winnipeg.”
In one northern Manitoba community, Hawgood discovered not just a shortage of medical expertise but a complete lack of 911 emergency services. Medical emergency calls there were made to the fire chief or a few trained individuals. If they weren’t available, people died.
He sees his AED donation program going one step further in the future: partnering a local community with a remote First Nations community so that cultures can be shared and unique relationships built. In this way, Hawgood says, AEDs might be only one of many ways to share with those who have less.