More than 150 students came to the Mount Si High School Freshman Campus on Wednesday, Aug. 24 to have their hearts screened for abnormalities that could lead to sudden cardiac arrest.

The Nick of Time Foundation and Mount Si High School partnered to provide the screening program to students before the school year and sports seasons began.

Set up at the Freshman Campus Gymnasium, medical volunteers with the foundation tested students with an electrocardiogram (EKG), listened to heart sounds, and did echocardiograms to look for abnormalities in heart patterns that could lead to sudden cardiac arrest or other heart problems.

Margie Blackmon, Mount Si High School’s main campus nurse and the school district’s nurse supervisor, explained how the event was organized for students and parents to learn about heart health.

“They get their blood pressure taken by the [firefighters], they go and get their EKG done, and they see a physician who listens to their heart sounds and then they take the EKG findings to the cardiologist,” she said. “The cardiologist reviews it with the student and the parents and some of them get an echocardiogram and then the students come over and learn CPR.”

This event was the Nick of Time Foundation’s 52nd school heart screening. Darla Varrenti, the organization’s founder and executive director, started the foundation after a personal experience with sudden cardiac arrest in 2004.

“The foundation was started in memory of my 16-year-old son Nick, who died from a sudden cardiac arrest. We didn’t know this happened to kids and other families should be made aware that this is something that happens to children every day,” Varrenti said. “We have screened over 16,600 kids. We’ve found 467 who have needed some kind of follow up and of them, 120 have had serious procedures for things that could have led to cardiac arrest.”

Varrenti said the foundation finds at least one student at each of its events, who has a heart irregularity or other symptom that needs to be looked at further.

“We’ve never had a screening where we haven’t found something,” she said.

Blackmon worked with Ray Wilson, Mount Si’s director of athletics and activities, and Betsy Evensen, Athletic Department secretary, to help host the foundation’s screening event this year.

“I’ve been on a waiting list for about three years. They go and do it monthly but it’s so many schools that they work with, I’ve been trying to get them in,” Blackmon said. “Ray Wilson, myself, and Betsy Evensen worked together with the foundation to make this happen. They deserve a lot of credit.”