INDIANAPOLIS — Shawn Sima's daughter has been healthy her entire life. She played every sport she could.
"On Feb. 2, 2016, she went to the gym after leaving a softball game to go run on a treadmill to get ready for cheerleading tryouts, and she collapsed and suffered sudden cardiac arrest, which means, she died," Sima said.
According to Sima, a bystander rushed to his daughter and gave her CPR. Others used an AED to help shock her back to life.
"Until my daughter collapsed and almost died, I had no idea on just how prevalent cardiac arrest was in kids," Sima said. "I had no idea that 20 kids a day in the United States, every single day, lose their life to sudden cardiac arrest."
Sima is a parent advocate for the Florida-based organization Who We Play For.
The organization helps educate the public on the importance of heart screenings and pushes for high schools and colleges to have students have an electro-cardiogram test before competing in sports.
Right here in central Indiana, a 15-year-old boy died from a heart condition in May. R’Mon Rowley, a freshman at Lawrence North High School, died from myocarditis, which causes heart failure.
Sima said more needs to be done.
"The key is the stethoscope exam that I've done, misses, on average, 96% of things that are going to kill your kids. You cannot hear electricity going through a wall, and you cannot hear it going through a kid," Sima said.
Sima said a stethoscope allows a person to hear things like a murmur, an irregular heartbeat or a fast heartbeat.
"An EKG is what you need to pick up electrical disturbances," Sima said.
Sima doesn't want what happened to daughter to happen to anyone else.
"This is the leading cause of death at school and the leading cause of death of athletes, and nobody knows a thing about it until a kid drops dead in your neighborhood," Sima said.