VIDEO: Save a Life with a Defibrillator

When Bill Nauta, the emergency management coordinator for Chatham Borough, heard a teen in Wayne was hit with a baseball and died while waiting for the ambulance to come, he promised himself it would never happen in Chatham.

"That's what did it for me," Nauta said. "That's what got this started."

Nauta, who works for Atlantic Health System Hospitals selling and training people to use automated external defibrillators (AEDs), started working to get defibrillators in public areas in Chatham.

Before long, JoAnne Babbitt of The John Taylor Babbitt Foundation contacted Nauta and asked how she could help. "I said, 'I need defibrillators,'" Nauta said. "They paid for half of them. ... I'd like to see them get some credit for that."

The foundation was named for a Chatham resident who died of sudden cardiac arrest at 16 while playing basketball in the parish center at St. Patrick Church. John's parents, Dave and JoAnne, started the foundation, and their younger son Andrew works with them as well. The nonprofit organization raises awareness for sudden cardiac arrest and works to purchase AEDs and train people to use them.

Babbitt has also lobbied for a Good Samaritan law in New Jersey, which will protect anyone not trained on the AEDs from liability should they use one in an emergency.

Last week the State Senate and Assembly passed the Good Samaritan bill. It now goes to the desk of Gov. Chris Christie for his signature. Babbitt said the bill's passage is "great news" and she hopes Christie agrees to a public signing of the bill.

"It depends on where the governor is going to be and whether he agrees to it or not," Babbitt said. She said she hopes the signing can be done at the Pingry school, where her son John was a student when he died, and with representatives from different JTB Heart Clubs from high schools in the area, including Chatham High School.

Getting the legislation passed, Babbitt said, was "definitely a group effort. I couldn't do this without the people from Chatham, the people from Pingry, the people from a lot of different groups. ...

"We’re just so happy, we feel so blessed. It’s been a long journey," Babbitt said.

If the law is signed, New Jersey will become the 44th state with a Good Samaritan law.

Each AED costs about $3,000, according to Nauta. The machines contain two pads which must be replaced after use or every two years and cost about $85 each, and one battery which must be replaced every for years and costs about $100 each.

Newer machines also come with a pair of scissors for cutting clothes off a patient, a razor for shaving hair—the machine "works on skin, not on hair," Nauta said—and a mask for administering mouth-to-mouth. The AEDs give instructions aloud and in English. "Some of the newer devices are even more intelligent," Babbitt said. "They definitely are idiot-proof."

To see how easy the machines are to use, this reporter went to an informal training with Nauta and learned to use one.

AEDs may already be found at most fields and schools in the Chathams, and within the Chatham Borough Municipal Building and Chatham Township Municipal Building. Nauta's wife Carol, who is the deputy director for Chatham Recreation, used one of the township's machines in spring 2011 to revive a senior citizen who collapsed while playing basketball.