On May 13, 2009, 34-year-old Charlottesville resident Catherine Brown was barely clinging onto life after suffering a severe cardiac arrest. But within the 12 minutes it took a University ambulance to arrive, a young woman had saved her from the unthinkable. That young woman was third-year College student Lise Kvan, who upon witnessing her mother's friend fall unconscious to the living room floor, performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
"Lise is the reason I beat the odds." Brown said. "She is the reason why I am alive."
Sudden cardiac arrests strike more than 200,000 people in the United States alone, making it the leading cause of death, according to the American Heart Association and the Red Cross. The condition