Sometime on Saturday night, Jan. 24, at the Delbarton School basketball court in Morristown, N.J., hearts stopped.

Well, just one actually stopped, but many others skipped a beat at least. Poly Prep’s starting senior point guard and leader on both ends of the court, Stephen Lazzaro, suffered a sudden cardiac arrest during the opening quarter. “It was quite scary,� said assistant coach Glenn McCartney, who helped Lazzaro to the gym floor.

CPR, administered rapidly by Stephen’s dad and teammate Michael Kumar’s dad, Sampath Kumar M.D., both physicans, plus a defibrillator on the scene saved this young man’s life.

Unfortunately, this occurrence is becoming more and more prevalent on the high school sports front all across the country. Defibrillators in schools in New York State are required.

A Fund in the name of Stephen Lazzaro has been set up at SUNY Downstate for the purpose of raising monies for cardiovascular research to study valvular heart disease and arrhythmias.

Stephen’s hope is that defibrillators in schools will become mandatory across the board across the nation. The placement of automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in public locations has provided a means for early defibrillation for out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest (SCA).

Public-access defibrillation in locations such as schools and universities has shown a clear survival benefit achieving survival rates of 41 to 74 percent if bystander CPR is provided and defibrillation occurs within 3 to 5 minutes of arrest.

This large-scale success has led many schools, universities, and sporting organizations to accelerate implementation of AEDs at athletic venues in an attempt to prevent sudden cardiac death (SCD) in both athletes and non-athletes attending athletic events.

Stephen has turned his attention from playing to helping the team by acting as a mentor to the younger players while helping Head Coach Bill McNally on the bench. He has been an inspiration to many while he rehabilitates from these recent events.

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