LA students get started on new required CPR training

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- After Gov. Jerry Brown last month signed a bill to make CPR instruction a part of high-school health classes, some Los Angeles students are getting started on the training already.

Students at Abraham Lincoln High School in Los Angeles are among the first in the state to receive hands-on CPR training, which will soon be required to graduate.

An estimated 46,000 students will be trained in Los Angeles County alone, according to Shawn Casey with the American Heart Association of Greater Los Angeles. That could potentially save thousands of lives, she noted.

Union Bank is donating 40 CPR kits each to Lincoln and Crenshaw high schools to help with the training.

Singer songwriter Ilisa Juried spoke to the students about the importance of the training. She survived her own cardiac arrest incident while visiting New York City when she was 18 thanks to CPR performed by a nurse on vacation who happened to be nearby.

"If it weren't for CPR, I definitely wouldn't be alive," Juried said. "Definitely not."