Tragedy struck without warning

There was no warning that Carole and John Crawford’s ‘fit’ teenage son would die in his bedroom at night as mysteriously as a cot-death baby.

But along with their heartbreak and devastation, the couple needed answers to why he had died.

Medics said that 17-year-old Jamie – who had just passed a medical test to go into the RAF – had died ‘of a heart thing’.

Carole (54), from Hasland, Chesterfield, said: “We were just completely baffled.  We were just absolutely desperate wanting to know what it was.  I remember the coroner up every day.  We wanted to know what had happened.”

But it was only thanks to their own research 12 years ago that they found a name for what had taken Jamie’s life – cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle.

And it took the distraught couple six months to get medical screening that reassured them that their daughter, and they themselves, did not have a similar heart condition.

The family still find it difficult to accept that they were not automatically offered screening, and that they had such a hard time trying to find our about the condition that killed Jamie.

But the fight against such sudden deaths, and help for families affected by them, are now hotting up now – and Carole and John are among parents helping to make that possible.

The courageous Chesterfield couple agreed to speak about their pain and struggles because they want to raise awareness of sudden cardiac deaths in the young.

They now fundraise to support charity efforts helping bereaved parents, and are making great breakthroughs in pressing for increased screening that might prevent such a sudden cardiac deaths in young people aged under 35.