Approximately 17 million people die of cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks and strokes every year.

On Thursday, July 18th, at 4:00 PM, the American Heart Association and FAU worked together to help reduce that number.

The AHA collaborated with FAU, as they have done in past years, to provide a kick-off event in the DaVinci room of the FAU Engineering East building for the annual Palm Beach Heart Walk that will happen Sept. 28.

FAU continues its’ long-term involvement with the AHA to “increase knowledge about ways to address heart-related health issues,” according to Interim President Dennis Crudele.

For this year’s event, they plan to have 30 students participate as FAU team captains, each in charge of 10 walkers, for an overall total of 300 members to raise $10,000. Although this may seem out-of-reach to some, Special Assistant to the President Lynn Laurenti believes wholeheartedly that these goals are easy to achieve.

“I am in high hopes that we’ll be able to reach our goal of 30 teams, 300 walkers and $10,000 in donations,” Lynn Laurenti said. “Last year we had 26 teams, 192 walkers and $8,312 in donations. FAU’s best year ever was 2007 (when the walk was still taking place on our campus), when we had 30 teams, 332 walkers and $23,433 in donations.”

Interim President Crudele is very enthusiastic and supportive of the cause. In his 26 years at FAU, he’s annually fielded teams for the event.

The kick-off is over two months before the actual event, but according to Laurenti, it’s never too early for preparation.

“The reason we’re doing the FAU kick-off in July, two months before the Heart Walk will take place on September 28th, is to give the captains time to organize teams and do fundraising,” Lynn Laurenti said. “The participants need time to form teams, recruit members, seek the financial support of their friends and family members, etc.”

In Crudele’s e-mail about the event, he mentions Gavin Weiser, the 3-year-old with the title of FAU’s “Heart Walk poster boy.” Only a couple of days after his birth, heart surgery saved his life and he made his debut at last year’s kick-off event.

Weiser is Lynn Laurenti’s grandson.

Lynn Laurenti organized FAU’s teams for the second year in a row because of said grandson, who was saved by heart surgeons at Miami Children’s Hospital eight days after he was born with the congenital heart defect coarctation of the aorta, which could have been fatal.

“He’s now a very healthy 3-year-old, and we will be forever grateful to the American Heart Association for its dedicated work over the course of many decades to increase knowledge about the causes, treatment and prevention of heart problems in children and adults,” Laurenti said.

Both Weiser’s parents and grandparents have strong ties to FAU, furthering Lynn Laurenti’s interest not only in the cause but also in FAU. Laurenti’s daughter is an FAU alum, her husband is an alum as well and her father was on the Arts and Letters faculty for approximately 30 years. Lynn Laurenti herself was a member of FAU’s founding junior class in 1964, graduating with an English degree in 1966.

“As you can see, we’re an industrial strength FAU family,” Lynn Laurenti said.

Susanna Laurenti, Gavin Weiser’s mother, was at the event. She’s been involved for a little less than three years, since her son was about 6 months old.

“We’re just really grateful to the heart association for everything that they’ve done to further the research and the advances in cardiac health and spreading awareness and the role they play in helping cure kids like my son who do have a heart problem and we’ll always be grateful that these resources exist,” Susanna Laurenti said.

Another very involved FAU and AHA participant is former football coach Howard Schnellenberger. He’s been involved in the cause for 50 years total, 12 of those spent on AHA events through FAU.

“I did this last year and before that I had been here for a lot of years and I had walked at a lot of heart walks…so when they said that they would like for me to participate more dramatically last year I thought it’d be a good thing for the football coach to do,” Schnellenberger said. “Many of my friends are not on this earth because of diseases like these. It’s something that we all have to try to cure.”

However, you don’t have to be as involved as the Laurentis or Schnellenberger to be a part of FAU’s AHA efforts.

“I don’t have any personal ties to the cause, but I know it’s something that affects a lot of other families so that’s why I just wanted to do it,” University Relations Coordinator and Heart Walk walker Venante Laguerre said. “It personally hasn’t affected me, but I know others that it has affected.”