Community Corner
Selfless Scout Donates Defibrillator to Mauldin Cultural Center
MCC thrilled to have life-saving device on hand, director says.
Nathaniel Stafford, a scout with Troop 725 chartered at Christ Community Church in Simpsonville, presented the Mauldin Cultural Center this week with a state-of-the-art AED (Automated External Defibrillator) during a regular meeting of the Mauldin Lions Club.
Stafford, a freshman at Mauldin High School, was awarded two AEDs in 2010 from Cardiac Science, a medical device company headquartered in Wisconsin through a partnership between the Boy Scouts of America and their company.
Scouts were invited to create videos educating the public on the importance of AEDs. Nathan's video was selected as one of the winners and he donated one AED to an organization in his community in North Carolina where he lived before relocating to the Upstate.
The other AED sat in his closet as he asked local churches, groups and centers if they would be interested in receiving the other AED. Many of the groups already had AEDs in place, but then Nathan heard about the Mauldin Cultural Center.
Nathan's mother, DeAnna, joined the local chapter of Lions Club in late 2012 and heard about an incident where one of their members had experienced a heart attack at an event and survived due to the quick response of fellow Lions members and medical teams. She then noticed that the Center did not yet have an AED and told her son about it.
“We never had an AED in the facility as funding just wasn't available,” says George Patrick McLeer, the Center's executive director. “This donation means a lot to our facility. We have almost 30,000 people a year through our doors and having the capability to provide life-saving support to an individual is a blessing.”
The AED Nathan donated is completely automated. “All we have to do is open it up and it literally tells us what to do. You don't have to press a button, you just have to attach the pads to the individual and the machine determines if he/she needs to be treated or not. Anyone can use it, which is reassuring in an emergency situation,” says McLeer.
The Center will be looking for a proper display case for the machine in a prominent location so it can be easily accessed in the event of an emergency. The Center will also be putting together a training session for some of the groups that use the facility on a regular basis.