Laurie Schmidt

30 INSPIRE LAURIE SCHMIDT

Making a difference, one child at a time

Jason Klaiber

Since 2015, Laurie Schmidt has worked with students, teachers, guidance counselors and administrators to promote full-school health in districts around Central New York and northeast Pennsylvania. Pictured in 2011 with her dad, Mike Calvasina, right after the two ran their third half marathon together. Schmidt has retained the memory of her father’s near-fatal heart attack as a source of inspiration amidst her career with the American Heart Association.

As much as she acknowledges and appreciates February’s reputation as American Heart Month, Laurie Schmidt has made it her year-round mission to raise awareness about cardiovascular issues.

After all, the Whitesboro resident has spent the better part of a decade stopping by schools across Central New York and parts of northeastern Pennsylvania as a dedicated representative for the American Heart Association.

In that span with the not-for-profit organization, Schmidt has served as a wellness educator through and through, but as of late last spring, she can more officially go by the title of full-time youth marketing director for her coverage area, having taken over for her workplace mentor Meg Corey.

With that position comes the responsibility to play the “energetic” neighbor who fills in for the usual classroom teachers, thus bringing about a slight change of pace for the students.

All the while, Schmidt is tasked with sharing informational resources to these elementary, middle and high schoolers as well as the faculty members who either act as intermediaries in her days away or facilitators for her recurrent in-person visits.

Those resources of hers can be anything from pamphlets on blood glucose levels and printouts of heart-related fun facts, to low-sodium recipes and instructions for seated yoga exercises.

Sometimes she’ll pass along calming two-minute videos of the river water rushing by the Statue of Liberty, for example, as a way to promote social-emotional health.

“If the kids have a big math test coming up and they’re nervous, they can get in the right headspace with these videos,” Schmidt said. “We’re really stressing now more than ever the importance of how your heart, mind and body all go hand in hand.”

As the social-emotional side has come into greater focus, the American Heart Association has responded by distributing bell-ringers that encourage teamwork and cooperation; posters showing the anatomy of the brain; and a handout that covers different beneficial ways to “get moving” at home—a list that includes jumping jacks, running in place and frog jumps.

To set the tone for a healthy path in life, the kids at the elementary level are taught how to be “heart heroes” by suggesting family walks, expressing to their parents that they wish to have more green vegetables on their dinner plates, and telling loved ones about the side effects of smoking and vaping.

As the students reach middle and high school, Schmidt sees greater inhibition when it comes to jumping rope in gym class, so one alternative she offers is the chance to download the association’s phone app to take quizzes about such topics as hands-only CPR.

Additionally, she inspires students of those ages to rack up community service hours through nursing home visits or any “kind-hearted” volunteering they choose.

“At the end of the day, I’m really thankful to work for an organization that means so much to me, is keeping our communities strong, and is having everyone live long, healthy lives,” Schmidt said. “If I can make a difference in just one person’s life, then I’d feel like I’d done my job.”

Before she hopped on board with the American Heart Association and even before her previous jobs in the insurance world, Laurie Schmidt’s first serious run-in with cardiovascular troubles came the day her father experienced a heart attack.

It was in June of 2006 when the two were biking around the Southern Tier region that he stopped to say he needed a short break.

When Laurie handed her dad a Powerade bottle retrieved from a nearby gas station, he was unable to twist the top off—a sign that set off worry straight away.

Not knowing what to do next, Laurie called her mother using the family cell phone she still thanks herself for bringing on that cycling trip.

The then-18-year-old proceeded to quickly re-enter the gas station’s convenience store to pick up aspirin for her ailing father before calling 911, just as she was urgently advised to do.

Sitting by her father’s hospital bed, Laurie wondered how such a thing could happen to a 49-year-old, physically active non-smoker, but that was when she learned that her paternal grandfather had died of a heart attack at that same age.

“It was a wild experience, but that was really my first time understanding heart issues,” Schmidt said. “With hereditary things like that, sometimes you don’t have control over it, but you can still make different lifestyle choices to help prevent some of those problems to an extent.”

As time passed and her dad recovered from two open-heart surgeries and the placement of a stint in his main artery, both he and Laurie began running half-marathons together while he made sure to go into the doctor’s office for extra checkups.

Over 15 years later, Laurie has remained boundlessly appreciative for the medical research and career opportunities of the American Heart Association, especially when she sees her three kids play and converse day to day with their granddad. SWM