INDIANA. -- A proposal in the Indiana statehouse causing heartache for one local parent.
House bill 1004 would remove a nearly three-year-old law requiring automatic external defibrillators near school athletic events and practices.
Julie West lost her son Jake in late September of 2013, when he suffered from sudden cardiac arrest.
After years of hard-fought battles to get AEDs into Indiana schools, West now is dealing with the possibility of having to fight all over again.
An unimaginable loss for Julie West and her family turned into triumph in July 2023, when then Indiana governor Eric Holcomb signed the law requiring schools have AEDs, as well as a plan for cardiac emergencies. Earlier this month, West found out the law she worked tirelessly to help make happen could go by the wayside.
"When I found out on January ninth what happened, I just couldn't believe it, I reached out to a few people to find out why, and I couldn't get a good answer, to me there's no good answer, but I could not get an answer to why," said West
West still has yet to get much clarification on the possible removal of the law, but she has some ideas.
"I believe there's just a few lawmakers that do not like mandates on schools, and they were hearing from the Indiana school board association about the fact that they felt it would be tough for the schools to be able to financially purchase massive, that was the word, massive, amounts of AEDs, which that's just not the case," said West.
ABC57 reached out to the bill's authors, co-authors, and sponsors, and have yet to hear back. West is currently in Indianapolis, doing everything she can to make sure a law so deeply personal to her doesn't land on the chopping block.
"I hope to speak to them, the American Heart Association did a call to action, the Play for Jake foundation, and also my hometown, we rallied and so many emails and phone calls were sent in to the committee members and we found out that that made a big difference, because the night before we testified, all of a sudden there was a proposed amendment that they put out so thank goodness for that," said West.
The vote will take place Wednesday morning at 8:30 a.m.