Galway Bay FM News Archives
Brave teen’s fundraiser in memory of dad who died from heart attack
Date Published: 16-Mar-2011
The sudden death of a fit man from a heart condition he wasn’t aware of, has led to his 16 year old daughter organising a fundraiser for Croí through her local youth club.
Aoife O’Shea from Kinvarra lost her dad, Mike, last October when he collapsed while cycling home after completing a charity cycle earlier that day. Ironically, the popular Mike, an insurance broker, knew Croí well as he did some business with them and participated in almost all of their charity cycles. Sadly, Mike was completely unaware that he himself had an underlying heart condition that would indeed prove fatal.
Aoife, the eldest of three children, and a fifth year student in Seamount College, is organising a Fashion Show to be held in Gort on March 25 through her No Name Club, of which she has been a member for the past two years.
This is Aoife’s biggest project to date in the club and one that has been driven by her need to raise not only much needed funds for Croí, the West of Ireland Cardiac Foundation, but awareness of heart disease.
Mike O’Shea was a fit and healthy 49 year old who didn’t smoke, hardly drank and cycled forty miles every Saturday morning. On the day he died, he was returning from Killaloe in County Clare after completing a much longer charity cycle. He collapsed outside Portumna from a blood clot in the main artery, a heart condition he wasn’t even aware he had.
Aoife talks without bitterness about losing her father at such a young age and is determined to raise awareness. She says she was delighted when the Gort No Name Club agreed that the beneficiaries of their fashion show would be Croí.
See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.