Cynthia Schwartz
When Bill Arsenault was in junior high school, he decided that he wanted to become a doctor. After completing two years of pre-med studies at a community college, Bill realized that he would not be able to afford medical school. Since Bill still wanted a career in the medical field, he decided to pursue his passion for medicine by taking different path.
The path for Bill was the United States Navy. Bill enlisted as a Navy Corpsman and was assigned to the Naval hospital in San Diego, working in patient care on the thoracic and cardiac floors. This path gave him the opportunity to become a licensed vocational nurse (LVN). Continuing his dream, Bill graduated college with a B.S.N. degree and became a registered nurse.
Bill loved working in Cardiac Care, Cardiac Surgery Intensive Care, and the Cardiac Catheterization lab. He said, “Anything related to the heart was always interesting to me. I got a taste of this field early on in my career.” After working with cardiac patients for over 22 years in hospitals, Bill and his wife Debbie opened up a training center that taught CPR and provided cardiac-related courses to employees in local hospitals, EMTs, respiratory therapists, and other medical personnel.
After retiring and moving to PebbleCreek in 2016, Bill leveraged his educator background to volunteer in two sports: pickleball and softball. Bill is the player development chairperson for the PebbleCreek Pickleball Club. One of his passions is teaching players new to pickleball. Bill said, “I take a lot of pride in seeing a novice player advance to playing at a higher level. I got them started.” Bill coaches a PebbleCreek senior softball team and has taught players and coaches what to do in a cardiac emergency, including how to use an Automated External Defibrillator (AED).
Bill commented about teaching, “I get a lot of satisfaction teaching people. It is rewarding when lay people and professionals come back and tell me that there was a cardiac emergency and they knew what to do.”