ARLINGTON — It took a community effort to obtain a piece of equipment organizers hope they will never have to use.
The Arlington Library recently obtained and installed an automated external defibrillator for public use.
The defibrillator, which was donated by the Cascade Valley Hospital Foundation, can be used by trained library staff on visitors who may happen to suffer a heart attack while on the premises.
“We’re just really, really happy that we have this in case anything happens,” said Kathy Bullene, managing librarian of the Arlington Library. “The (Friends of Arlington Library) worked really hard to put this together.”
The $1,500 piece of equipment was obtained after the Friends of Arlington, which primarily raises funds for library equipment and services, approached the Arlington Kiwanis and Rotary clubs, as well as the foundation for financial assistance.
The Friends applied for a hospital grant to purchase the defibrillator, but learned shortly after that they had missed the deadline application by one day.
But shortly after, the foundation learned that it had obtained a similar defibrillator from one of its clinics, Bullene said.
“They had one from a clinic the hospital had closed, and the foundation agreed to donate that piece of equipment to the library,” she said.
Personnel from the city of Arlington donated and installed a cabinet to house the piece of equipment.
Library staff had been working for about a year to obtain funding for a defibrillator, Bullene said.
The idea to obtain the device came from a Sno-Isle Libraries managers’ meeting. Sno-Isle manages the Arlington Library, as well as 21 other libraries throughout Snohomish County.
Since that meeting, county libraries have been slowly adding defibrillators as funding becomes available, Bullene said.
Bea Randall, president of the Friends of the Arlington Library, said getting the life-saving tool was a city-wide effort.
“There’s been a movement to get them in town,” Randall said. “We hope it’s never used, but if it is it would save a life.
“We just kept saying that the life we save might be our own.”
