Decade-long effort puts 50 defibrillators in one town
BBCWhen Jamie Richards helped install a defibrillator on his town's high street 12 years ago, it marked the beginning of a much bigger project.
More than 50 of the potentially lifesaving devices are now available across Stone, Staffordshire, while the charity he founded, AED Donate, has helped install 10,000 across the country.
Richards and fellow resident Joe Dean are preparing to embark on a 20-mile charity walk around the town in a bid to raise £2,500 to keep the defibrillators maintained and ready for use for another year.
"We just wanted a bit of a different way, really, to enable us to fund these defibrillators, and that's where Joe and I came up with a plan to do our walk," he said.
The men will set off on a fundraising walk on 16 October to carry out routine health checks on all of the town's publicly accessible defibrillators to ensure they remain ready for use.
Richards, chief executive of AED Donate, said they were notified whenever the defibrillators were used.
"We put our first one in back in - well when we first started 12 years ago - on the high street, and it's just gone up from there," he told BBC Radio Stoke.
The pair set out with the aim of raising about £500 on their charity walk last year but actually ended up raising just over £3,000.
"We zigzagged across the town, checking all 50 defibrillators; I think 54's the exact number," Richards explained.
"We did over 20 miles walking, and we status-checked everyone en route to check they were ready, in date and ready for the community in Stone."
Each year in the UK, more than 40,000 people suffer an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, with fewer than one in 10 surviving, according to the British Heart Foundation (BHF).
Dean described how the pair came up with the "mad idea" of putting their weekend walking hobby to better use.
"I've lived here for many years, and I've seen the defibrillators pop up around the town over the last 10 years or so," he said.
"I thought... I do about 20,000 steps a day, let's put it to good use and help raise some money to help support the town and keep the devices ready for any emergency that might occur."
As part of the challenge, they will also visit a local school to deliver a free CPR and defibrillator awareness session.
Funds raised will go towards maintaining the defibrillators, including replacing damaged or expired pads, batteries and cabinets, as well as supporting new community defibrillator projects throughout Staffordshire.
Richards said the pair had set a £2,500 fundraising target for this year's challenge, which also coincides with Restart a Heart Day, a national campaign raising awareness of cardiac arrest and lifesaving CPR skills.
"That will keep every single defibrillator live in Stone for another year. Without having to dip into our charity reserves," the former firefighter explained.
"I think the most humbling thing for us last year was literally people were stopping their cars in the middle of the road just to put a £1 in the bucket.
"It was just a great feeling."
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