Meeting Her Moment: High School Senior Destinee Bellard
September 25, 2024
The first-ever residential summer camp for high schoolers offered by LSU Eunice in partnership with Acadiana Workforce Solutions and Ochsner Health—the Future Med Pros Boot Camp—taught Destinee Bellard healthcare skills she used right away.
Destinee Bellard, center, with her mother Antoinetta Cormier, left, and grandfather Felton Booze, right. This summer, Bellard and 35 other high school students from underserved communities got hands-on healthcare experience, digital literacy badges and CPR certifications at LSUE.
When rising high school senior Destinee Bellard from Rayne, Louisiana, attended the first-ever residential camp at LSU Eunice this summer and learned lifesaving first-responder skills, she didn’t know she’d be using them just five days later.
“My older brother and I’d stayed up all night, and around 6 a.m., we started hearing stuff, like gasping for air,” Bellard said. “We went to check, and it was my grandfather. We called mom and dad to go in there, and then we called 911. They told us to start doing chest compressions.”
“I could tell my dad didn’t really know how to do them—how to place his hands, how to push and how to keep a steady motion,” Bellard continued. “So, I showed him.”
Bellard’s grandfather, Felton Booze, was having a heart attack. When the emergency medics arrived about 15 minutes later, they took over doing chest compressions.
“That was July 25, four days before my birthday,” said Antoinetta Cormier, Felton Booze’s daughter and Destinee Bellard’s mother, who works as lead supervisor of the LSUE dining hall. “I’m so grateful Destinee had just had a week’s worth of training for this very moment.”
“The whole experience was nerve-racking,” Bellard said. “I was so scared, but I could tell I needed to apply what I had just learned. I never thought I’d be put into that situation, but they had taught me what to do, so I could use that.”
The first-ever LSUE residential summer camp in partnership with Acadiana Workforce Solutions and Ochsner Health—the Future Med Pros Boot Camp—spanned five days and taught the high school participants foundational healthcare, lab and first-responder skills.
“We learned how to do chest compressions on not just adults, but kids and infants,” Bellard said. “I also learned how to check someone’s heart rate in the arm and the neck, how to take blood pressure with and without tools, how to do the Heimlich if someone’s choking and how to stitch wounds and tape them up to stop bleeding.”
Students at the summer camp met with a wide range of healthcare professionals, such as nurses, pediatricians, neurologists, radiologists and ultrasound techs. Each day, the large group was introduced to various healthcare careers. The goal of the new residential camp is to build a talent pipeline starting in high school to help meet critical workforce shortages and encourage future healthcare leaders to find the educational path that’s right for them.
“Leadership is about preparation as well as one’s ability to step up to meet the moment,” LSUE Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs & Provost John Hamlin said. “We’re so glad Destinee felt prepared to meet her moment and help someone in critical need, even if there was nothing anyone could do at the time to change the final outcome.”
Felton Booze was buried at the Shrine of Our Mother of Mercy Catholic Church in Rayne last month. He was 69 and affectionately known by his friends and family as Pete, Pick-A-Pooh, Daddy Rabbit and Zydeco Man Booze.
“Destinee was always a natural leader, and she’s just 17,” Cormier said. “Even at the funeral—my dad’s brother’s daughter was reading the obituary and started crying, so Destinee walked right up to the podium and took over. I’m so proud of her.”
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