At the reunion, held at Sunnyvale's Wyndham Hotel, Ernie Bakin, chief of the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety, lauded the city council for its support of his department's Gift from the Heart program. Launched in 1998, the program has made automated external defibrillators accessible to public safety officers and the community at large, thereby increasing the chances that victims of sudden cardiac arrest will receive emergency defibrillation within the 5.8-minute window that can mean the difference between life and death.

"We trust during these difficult economic times that the city council's support will continue," said Bakin, alluding to Sunnyvale's projected $16 million budget deficit for 2003­04. The city's proposed budget for the next fiscal year would reduce funding for fire services, which administers the program, from $515,000 to $357,525, a drop of almost 31 percent.

The proposed budget would, in theory, allow the city to maintain its current level of fire and emergency medical services by using a $500,000 "set-aside" fund to cover the salaries of two new fire service positions—a quality assurance program manager and a community outreach/public education staff person—and that of the emergency services coordinator, a position currently filled by Lt. Steve Drewniany.

Since the Gift from the Heart Program's inception, 14 cardiac arrest sufferers have been resuscitated via the defibrillators, which are computerized medical devices that evaluate a victim's heart rhythm and deliver the appropriate level of electric shock through the chest wall to the heart.

These defibrillator units have been installed in 24 city buildings, 22 fire vehicles and 35 police cars at a cost of about $250,000. Many local businesses now have them on-site, including the Silicon Valley WAVE (formerly the Town Center Mall), Onizuka Air Force Station and the campuses of AMD, Applied Materials and National Semiconductor.

According to Drewniany, all the city's public safety officers have been trained to use the units, as have more than 800 community members who have taken the CPR/AED classes offered by the Sunnyvale Parks and Recreation Department.

"They're very easy to use," said Teri Sheppard, who is both a cardiac arrest survivor and a trained defibrillator user.

In September 1998, Sheppard was working in her garage when she "just went numb all over" and collapsed. Her daughter called 911, and Tim Macierz and another Sunnyvale public safety officer responded from Station No. 4, just a few blocks away from Sheppard's house.

"I found Teri pulseless on the floor," Macierz recalled at last week's reunion.

After performing CPR, Macierz used the defibrillator unit in his patrol car to deliver an electric shock to Sheppard's heart.

Macierz was among 20 public safety officers at the reunion to receive Heartsaver Awards from the Santa Clara County division of the American Heart Association, which helps the city administer its CPR/AED classes. According to the heart association, sudden cardiac arrest claims about 250,000 lives a year in the United States, and 95 percent of all cardiac arrest victims die before reaching a hospital.

Drewniany said these statistics can improve through programs such as Gift from the Heart, believed to be the longest-operating public access defibrillation program in the United States. Los Angeles, New York City and Chicago all have similar programs.

"Defibrillation, rapidly administered, is one of the greatest tools we have to save someone," Drewniany said.