A mother’s loss, a mother’s purpose

Learn more about Leadership Studies at Royal Roads.

Faced with the loss of a loved one too young, many ask “Why?”

Faced with the sudden death of her 16-year-old son, Kim Ruether asked “How?”

How did it happen? How could it have been prevented? How can I make sure no other mother has to go through this?

In answering those questions and turning her pain into purpose over the last 12 years, Ruether has saved lives.

To honour her efforts and impact, Ruether, a 2020 graduate of Royal Roads University’s Master of Arts in Leadership and resident of Fairview, in northern Alberta, was presented the Alberta Order of Excellence — the province’s highest honour — by Lt.-Gov. Salma Lakhani.

AED was on hand but wasn’t used

Brock Ruether collapsed at a volleyball practice on May 22, 2012. Although his coach and teammates called 911 and although the emergency operator told them to have a nearby automatic external defibrillator (AED) on standby and begin CPR, he could not be saved. He’d suffered a sudden cardiac arrest.

In the hospital where she works as a diagnostic imaging technologist, Ruether and her now former husband, Wayne Ruether, were given the news. They live in a small town and she remembers the grim faces of the paramedics — people she knew — who tried to save her boy. She also remembers breaking the news to his teammates and their parents, and how those teens stood around Brock to say goodbye and share stories of their lives together.

But soon, Ruether began asking questions.

“As soon as Brock died, I was trying to find answers because I did not understand how he could just drop dead,” she says. “There was this spinning tornado of loss left that had to be filled with something, and that’s how I filled that void.”

She read the medical reports and requested and reviewed the 911 call transcript and recording, hearing that while the operator told the callers to have the AED nearby, they never instructed them to use it (an AED is a portable device that can deliver a shock to the heart to correct abnormal electrical activity). She learned that dispatchers’ and call-takers’ training needed to be enhanced to ensure available AEDs are used in cardiac emergencies. She also learned from a member of the medical examiner’s office that sudden cardiac arrest among young people was more common than even she knew. 

“It was really bizarre to me that I’d worked in health care for 25 years and had no idea that all these kids were having sudden cardiac arrest and that we were so under-prepared, and why they hadn’t used the automatic AED at the school,” Ruether says.

“All of these things I could see were a systemic error, they were not to be blamed on any of the bystanders or the dispatcher. It was the system, the system was failing.”

She set out to fix it.

Brock’s Law changed dispatchers’ training

In December of 2012, less than seven months after Brock’s passing, Ruether received registration for The Project Brock Society. Ever since, she has pushed and fundraised for AEDs in schools, and advocated for improved training for emergency dispatchers and call-takers.

She worked with the International Academy of Emergency Dispatch to create what is known as “Brock’s Law,” which has changed training and protocols for thousands of emergency medical dispatchers around the world dealing with sudden cardiac arrest calls, requiring them to advise callers to use an AED and to guide them in using it.

To this day, every such dispatcher learns Brock’s Law and that fateful 911 call is used in their training.

Of the provincial award that honours her advocacy, she says, “It’s a lovely way to be recognized for this work. And, hopefully, through this, other families can be spared and have their kids saved.”

But she notes the honour is “bittersweet,” saying, “I would give up any award, anything, just to have Brock back.”

Recently, she heard from a dispatcher in B.C. who’d had a similar call and, recognizing warning signs from that training and Brock’s case, instructed the caller to use the AED. The result: another young athlete was saved, their family spared the pain the Ruether family — including Brock’s siblings, Tegan, Tera and Ryan — has endured.

“There have been a number of cases like that,” Ruether says. “Dispatchers and call-takers have shared how that awareness has changed how they responded to a call, so there have definitely been lives saved.

“Which is so profoundly impactful because it feels like a little piece of Brock’s heart beats in those people who have been revived.”

Kim Ruether on her Royal Roads experience

Kim Ruether was asked about her time at Royal Roads and why, in the middle of her efforts to make schools safer and ensure better training for emergency medical dispatchers, she pursued her Master of Arts in Leadership.

She says that, going into the program, she thought having the degree would cause the “big dogs” in the health care system to better listen to her entreaties, to take her more seriously. But attending RRU was a “life-changing experience” that made her rethink her assumptions.

“What doing my masters did was change my lens on my existence and the way I viewed leadership and the importance of people who matter,” she says. “It’s not the big dogs that matter, it’s all of the little dogs that are lifting you and providing the wind under your wings. It’s all of those little people who are doing all those small things who are moving things forward.”

Learn more about Leadership Studies at Royal Roads.