North Orwell teen walks for heart awareness

A North Orwell teenager has raised thousands of dollars by walking three miles for local heart awareness.

Kelton Raymond, 14, participated in the Southern Tier Heart Walk at Otsiningo Park in Binghamton on April 10. The event was a fundraiser for the American Heart Association.

On that cold snowy morning, he was on the Guthrie Clinic Cardiology Department’s team called “A-Fib You Not.” His mother, Temperance, also accompanied him during the event.

“This is his second year participating in the walk,” said Temperance. “He raised $1,000 last year and was determined to raise even more this time.”

Kelton set a goal to raise $2,500, which he quickly attained with a kick-a-thon organized by The EDGE Martial Arts in Towanda. Donations for that event are obtained for each kick that students like Kelton complete. He reset his goal to $5,000 and reached it prior to the walk date. Altogether, his team raised around $6,000.

“It felt pretty good to do the walk again and I’m glad that I raised a lot of money to help people,” said Kelton.

He enjoys the annual walk because it can benefit people with heart conditions like his. He has atrioventricular nodal reentry tachycardia, a common type of supraventricular tachycardia. The condition is characterized by irregular and rapid heartbeats that start and end quickly.

Kelton was three-years-old when AVNRT was first suspected in him, but it wasn’t caught on a monitor until he was eight. Doctors heard his heart racing at 280 to 300 beats per minute and abruptly go to a normal rate. He would eventually have heart ablation surgery to help his condition.

To pay it forward, he now walks for people like his grandmother nicknamed Happy, who also has AVNRT and had the same surgery as him.

His charitable spirit doesn’t end at heart walks though. He is already planning a fundraiser to help Ukrainian children who have suffered from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.