On the night of March 10, 2014, I put my oldest daughter, then only 2, to bed, and promptly fell asleep beside her. This was a pretty regular occurrence: I was three months pregnant with our second (and so freaking tired), so I would nod off post-bedtime stories, with whatever sporting event my husband Blaine had on downstairs punctuating the household.
But on this night, a few minutes after dozing off, my phone started to buzz. And buzz. And buzz. It took me a second to realize what was happening—Google alerts, and then text messages. Then Blaine yelled to me from downstairs. Then my dad called.
“Is Blaine watching the Dallas game?” my dad said when I answered.
“I have no idea,” I said, running down the stairs. “Why?”
“Rich just collapsed on the bench,” he said.
He was talking about Rich Peverley, a childhood friend of mine from Guelph, our hometown, who had been playing in the NHL for a number of years. He’d been on the Stanley Cup-winning Boston Bruins in 2011—the Google alerts on my phone were vestiges of working on a sports mag during those playoffs—and had been traded to the Stars the summer before.
Blaine was standing up staring at the screen, where the camera focused on the hallway beside the Dallas bench. There was no update. After what seemed like an eternity, the announcer said Peverley was being transported to hospital. That the game wouldn’t go on. They would keep us, the at-home audience, apprised of his condition.
After a tense couple of hours waiting for news to pop up on TV or social media, I cautiously texted our friends, to see if anyone had news. One friend had heard from Rich’s wife, Nathalie, another close friend from high school. Having experienced a sudden cardiac event, Rich was alive and stable for the moment. The Dallas medical team, with the help of a defibrillator, had saved Rich’s life.
This was the beginning of a long road for Peverley, Nathalie and their three young children. Peverley trained hard for a year, hoping to step back on the ice and join his team, but ultimately, it wasn’t to be. “I’d hoped to get back,” the 34-year-old said. “But it just wasn’t worth the risk. Nathalie and I talked about it daily, and originally, I wanted no part of retirement. But it was the right decision.”
And that could be the end of the story. But Peverley decided to write a new beginning instead.
“An AED (automated external defibrillator) saved my life. They save lives every day. But only if people have access to them, and know how to use them,” Peverley says. “I knew I wanted to give back to the people of Dallas, who showed me so much support, as well as to my fellow Canadians, who supported me back home.” With this in mind, he and Nathalie founded Pevs Protects, a charity that raises money to purchase AEDs and train the general public to use them. Last year, Pevs Protects raised more than $41,000 and trained more than 400 people in defibrillator use.
“We’ve partnered with the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation, and the American Heart Association, to do what we can to better outcomes for people who experience sudden cardiac arrest,” he says. “It could have gone very differently for me. It goes differently for people all too often.”
Pevs Protects, in its second year, is gearing up for another round of fundraising in the next month. On February 24, OHL team the Guelph Storm will be hosting Pevs Protects Night, where game-goers will have the chance to win signed jerseys from a number of NHLers; a similar event will follow in Dallas on March 12. Pevs Protects will also use the events to raise awareness about AEDs and sudden cardiac events. For more information or to donate, check out pevsprotects.com.
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