Karen Sheets-Mobley watched her husband Trey collapse on a treadmill at Lakeside's gym on December 11, 2023, and that moment turned her into a cardiac arrest advocate pushing to put automated external defibrillators within reach of Louisville neighborhoods with the highest rates of heart disease. Gym staff rushed to perform CPR and used an AED on Trey before paramedics arrived, according to her fundraiser account, and that device is credited with keeping him alive long enough to reach the hospital.
A Terrifying Night and a Grim Prognosis
In her own words on her fundraising page, Sheets-Mobley recalls the moment clearly: “On December 11, 2023, my husband Trey was at Lakeside's gym working out on the treadmill and suddenly collapsed from a cardiac arrest,” she wrote on her GoFundMe page. She described how “staff administered CPR and used an AED (Automated External Defibrillator)” before Trey was transported for emergency care. At the hospital, the family received a sobering assessment from a cardiologist identified as Dr. Dillon, who she says told them Trey had “a 10% to 40% chance of survival.”
That brush with near-tragedy is the reason Sheets-Mobley says she wants to put more of these devices in the hands of Louisville communities that need them most. “I would like to raise money to purchase AEDs for areas in Louisville that have the highest rate of heart disease,” she wrote, framing her effort as a direct response to what her family experienced. The fundraiser notes that every dollar donated will be matched by an anonymous donor, effectively doubling the impact of each contribution toward the cause, according to the gofundme.com page.
Why Minutes Matter in Cardiac Emergencies
The stakes behind Sheets-Mobley's push are not abstract. According to the Louisville Fire Department, a person's likelihood of surviving cardiac arrest drops by 10% for every minute that passes without CPR. The department also notes that a victim's odds of survival after an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest can range from less than 5% to more than 60% depending on where in the country the emergency happens — a gap that underscores why access to tools like AEDs and bystanders trained to use them can be the difference between life and death.
That urgency prompted Louisville Fire to launch its own cardiac-arrest survival initiative in 2023, with what the department describes as a simple goal: increasing the likelihood that cardiac arrest victims in the city survive long enough to return home from the hospital. As part of that effort, the department trains city employees, police officers and community members in CPR, holding classes on the second Saturday of every month, per the Louisville Fire Department's cardiac-arrest survival page.
A Broader Pattern Behind the Push
Research on bystander intervention backs up why advocates like Sheets-Mobley are focused on getting AEDs into neighborhoods rather than just public buildings. The U.S. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion notes that cardiac arrests occurring outside a hospital setting are the leading cause of death nationwide, and that people are more likely to survive if a bystander uses an AED before emergency responders arrive. Separately, a geographic study published in BMJ Open found that most public out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur in residential areas with limited AED accessibility, concluding those areas should be prioritized for installation.
Louisville has taken other steps toward closing that gap in recent years. City officials previously rolled out an AED location-mapping system intended to instantly show the location of registered devices near a cardiac arrest victim, according to Louisville Metro Government, which also encouraged residents and businesses to register their AEDs so they can be found in an emergency.
For Sheets-Mobley, the data and city programs are secondary to the personal stakes that reshaped her life two years ago. Her fundraiser remains focused on a straightforward mission: putting more of the devices that helped save her husband within reach of other Louisville families facing the same kind of emergency, as detailed in the original report from The Courier-Journal.
