When a heart stops or someone stops breathing, the people nearby are the first first responders. Dummies on the Run was built on one belief: that anyone can learn to act confidently in those critical minutes between incident and medical care, without sitting through a complicated, expensive, all-day class.

 

Jerry Buffman founded Dummies on the Run in 1985 after years working as a paramedic and critical care nurse in Ann Arbor, Detroit, Seattle, and Anchorage. She kept seeing the same thing: people who wanted to help in an emergency but froze because no one had ever taught them in a way that felt approachable.

 

So she started doing something no one else was doing at the time: going to people's homes and teaching small groups in a relaxed, hands-on setting. Forty years later, that same philosophy drives every class.