Our speaker today was Mike Schoonover, born and raised in Shoreview and owner of local company Schoonover Auto Body. Mike spoke with us about a Foundation he has created in honor of his son Patrick who died in 2014 after he suffered a sudden cardiac event while playing in a bantam youth hockey game. The Patrick Schoonover Heart Foundation was created to honor & remember Patrick who was only 14 when he passed away due to Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA), caused by undetected heart defects. The goal of this foundation is to bring SCA awareness, education, and prevention and to eliminate SCA in kids - the leading cause of death among student athletes. The Patrick Schoonover Heart Foundation offers free heart screens for kids 14-24 throughout the Minneapolis-St. Paul area regardless of race, gender, income, or demographics. This work requires dozens of volunteers and the screenings include checks of EKGs, blood pressure, echocardiograms and a physician consult. They have screened over 6,500 kids since 2018 and have found 350 with abnormal results requiring physician follow-up. The overall survival rate for victims of SCA is only 10% in the U.S. but is 25% - 40% in MN due mostly to better understanding as well as access to AEDs (automatic external defibrillators) in public spaces. Schoonover and his family chose this path as a means of helping deal with their grief and become "better not bitter".