Narrator: In 2001, the Western Financial Group founded the non-profit Western Communities Foundation as a way of giving back and supporting the communities in which they live and work. The foundation supports a range of community-based charitable activities, including one that is actively saving lives. ILSTV sat down with the foundation’s Executive Director Don Tannas to learn more about the program.

Don Tannas: The program is to give one automated defibrillator to each community that’s served by Western Financial Group agency. We’ve just started our third year and we’vegiven out 40 and we will probably give away another 40 in the next two or three years.

Narrator: To raise money for the defibrillators, the foundation hosts the annual Fall Classic Charity Golf Tournament, an event that attracts not only insurance company partners but some celebrity guests, as well.But why the defibrillator and not some other piece of equipment? Don explains.

Don Tannas: The defibrillator resuscitates someone who has had a sudden cardiac arrest. If you have a sudden cardiac arrest, your heart is stopped.Technically, you’re dead. If you don’t have that resuscitation event within ten minutes, the chances of being revived are extremely low.It’s important that they be readily available on site. The big push behind it in lots of places is the emergency medical services people because they know they can’t always get there – maybe there’s only one ambulance in the area and they’re off at the far end of their district or being tied up at a crash or something like that. They’re saying that these defibrillators should be available in hockey arenas, old timers hockey or young people, because sudden cardiac arrest can occur at age 12, 14, 16 and of course it can occur at age 48.

Text: One of the defibrillators given out in 2006, the first year of the program, saved the life of a 48-year-old husband and father of three children.

To learn more about the Western Communities Foundation, please visit the Western Financial Group’s website: http://www.westernfinancialgroup.net.