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I received this bizarre e-mail from Chicago Tribune health reporter Julie Deardorff on August 11, 2006. I did not respond. The matter was then brought to the Tribune's attorneys who shed more light on the matter.

About two years later, in Save-A-Life Foundation v. Heimlich et al, the plaintiff's attorney listed Deardorff as a potential witness on Save-A-Life's Rule 26(a)(1) disclosures, 4/1/09: http://tinyurl.com/yeovfgr

Deardorff has written the following articles about the Save-A-Life Foundation and the organization's president/founder, Carol Spizzirri:

1) "Mother on a Mission - First Aid Might Have Saved her Daughter; Now Carol Spizzirri is a Relentless Crusader," 1/16/95: http://tinyurl.com/yalng7z includes the following:

'CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS
Chicago Tribune, Feb. 7, 1995

A story in the Jan. 16 Tempo section about the crusade of Carol Spizzirri of Grayslake to require police, firefighters, teachers, public-safety workers and emergency dispatchers to be trained in first aid and cardiopulmonary resuscitation contained some errors because it did not include details of official documents concerning the case that precipitated her campaign.

Spizzirri told the Tribune that her daughter, Christina Pratt, 18, had bled to death on a Lake County highway following a traffic accident in which the girl's arm was severed. According to a coroner's inquest, however, Spizzirri's daughter died in a hospital, more than an hour after the accident, of multiple traumatic injuries, including a depressed skull fracture in the back of her head. Also, according to Chief Deputy Coroner James Wipper, her arm was not severed in the accident, although Spizzirri maintains that it was.

The story also said that the first police officers at the scene of the accident "balked" at administering first aid, implying that they should have administered it, and that "basic first aid might have saved her life." In fact, the officers are not trained, certified or required to perform first aid, and given the official cause of death,
it is unlikely that basic first aid would have saved her.

The Tribune regrets the error.'

2) "CPR Activist Targets Kids as Emerging Heroes," 7/3/05: http://tinyurl.com/ydw2fdk that includes:

'Since 1993, more than a million Illinois children from kindergarten through 12th grade have been exposed to life-supporting first aid skills through SALF..."These emergencies happen everywhere," said Spizzirri, a former nurse"'

Deardorff bio & contact information: http://tinyurl.com/ya8zz72