Ambria Hammel/CATHOLIC SUN

St. Jerome teen brings lifesaving message to Vacation Bible School

Fourteen-year-old Katie Dimpfel plans to promote a pro-life message of sorts among her peers.

The Ss. Simon and Jude Girl Scout wants to train 1,000 youth — including fellow Scouts — in hands-only CPR. She’s hoping her quest will not only fulfill requirements to earn a Girl Scout’s highest honor, the Gold Award, but raise up a whole new generation of people with Good Samaritan hearts who are ready to step in and save a life.

Dimpfel, a St. Jerome parishioner, already taught the technique to 19 incoming fourth through sixth graders during a “one body in Christ”-themed Vacation Bible School at the parish June 16. It was a tag team effort between Dimpfel and St. Jerome’s new CPR ministry.

Dimpfel herself knew only conventional CPR before meeting Tom and Kate Jaramillo last fall. That’s when the St. Jerome couple, who only recently named their outreach the Sacred Heart CPR Ministry, trained roughly 1,000 students at eight campuses throughout the diocese in the hands-only CPR method.

Now, Dimpfel is not only confident in both CPR techniques, but recently earned certification from the American Heart Association as a Basic Life Support Healthcare Provider so she can teach others.

St. Jerome’s Vacation Bible School students marked the soon-to-be eighth-grader’s first class.

“It exponentially opens the number of people who will want do it,” Dimpfel said of hands-only CPR.

That’s because the technique does not involve mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. It instead focuses on continuous chest compressions.

“Remember, your hands are their heart,” Dimpfel told her students.

The young lifesavers took turns practicing on dummies with a partner for a minute at a time. They stopped after four minutes, just short of mirroring the average response time for professional help to arrive, said Tom Jaramillo, a retired firefighter and paramedic.

Some 400,000 people die each year from cardiac arrest, many of which could have been prevented Dimpfel said if bystanders felt confident in doing CPR.

The students also practiced combining CPR with an Automated External Defibrillator, which many parishes, including St. Jerome, has on hand.

“It takes lots of time. Your wrists are going to hurt very bad,” said Orlando Garcia, who turned 9 years old shortly after learning hands-only CPR.

Despite potential fatigue, 9-yer-old Citlalli Ramirez knew that her efforts would not be in vain.

“It felt like you were really saving somebody,” Ramirez said.

And that’s the exact result both Dimpfel and Kate Jaramillo of the CPR Ministry want: the confidence and skill to step in when needed.

“We’re looking to motivate youth to take on that higher level of responsibility,” Jaramillo said. “If we don’t intervene, there’s no chance whatsoever [of survival.]”

Jaramillo hopes to bring the CPR ministry to every parish. She sees it as a unification ministry and one that brings spiritual peace to life and death.

“When God takes a life, we’ll know we did our part,” Jaramillo said.