A parent, friend or teacher collapses in cardiac arrest. You have three minutes to save the person's life. What do you do?

Thanks to the UPMC-based National Center for Early Defibrillation, West Mifflin Area Middle School pupils have a good shot at knowing just what to do.

They are the first to use an interactive training CD-ROM from the center that requires them to make snap decisions about using CPR and automated external defibrillators, or AEDs.

Just down the hall from where the school stores its AED, the center launched the CD "Protest the Silence" in teacher Mike Kosko's health class Thursday in the library's computer lab.

The nonprofit center chose the middle school for the launch because that's where nurse Jane Rodgers used the AED to save former Assistant Principal Frank Capuzzi's life Dec. 23.

"We need an army of rescuers out there," said the center's Medical Director Vince N. Mosesso Jr. He wants the CD to correct the misconception that good emergency services or hospitals are enough to prevent death from cardiac arrest. Instead, the key is immediate bystander action, he said.

Part of the CD, developed by Pittsburgh-based Panta Rhei Media Inc., requires pupils to help teenage actors save the lives of people in sudden cardiac arrest, which, unlike a heart attack, usually involves a sudden loss of consciousness without warnings such as chest pains.

Close-ups of actual AEDs, including buttons and electrodes with diagrams showing where to place them on a person's chest, are shown during quizzes with instant scores.

Eighth-grader Ashley Lazzaro, who had some CPR and AED training about two years ago, said the CD refreshed her memory and taught her how to use an AED better.

All pupils at the middle school will have a chance to use the CD in the hope that they can be heroes like Rodgers, Principal Clifford Bowers told the class.

The center's executive director, Mary Newman, congratulated Pupil Personnel Services Coordinator Fred Botti for organizing one of the nation's leading AED programs.

Capuzzi, who returned to work Feb. 2 as acting principal of New England Elementary School, was initiated into the center's cardiac arrest survivors' network during the launch. "If you're in this club, you're living," he said.