Living for Zachary

Loss is part of life. But there’s also an order in which we expect to experience it. As children, we anticipate having to one day bury our parents but not the other way around. No parent can fathom having to bury a child — and certainly not one who is seemingly healthy. But for Karen Schrah, the unimaginable became a heartbreaking reality when, on April 2, 2009, her 16-year-old son, Zac, died unexpectedly during a routine football practice.

There were no signs. It all happened without warning. On what was an otherwise typical day, Karen's son Zac collapsed from Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) on his high school football field. The Schrah family later learned Zac died from a congenital heart disease called Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM), a common cause of SCA in young people, including young athletes.