Pam Neal
As Pam Neal stood at the microphone in her red ballgown, looking out over a packed crowd of Southern Arizona Heart Ball attendees in their country finest, she thought about who it was all for: her late husband, Daniel.
She and Daniel were just neighbors in the late 80s until one day, just before she moved out of her apartment, she bumped into him at the DMV. “We ended up going for coffee for about five hours,” Pam said with a laugh. “We had lunch, and then the next day he sent me a dozen roses at work. I told my secretary: ‘I’m gonna marry him.’”
She married Daniel four months later. “It was true love.”
Pam watched Daniel privately fight heart disease throughout their 35-year marriage. He experienced heart attacks, double bypass surgery and multiple stents, each time insisting that he didn’t want Pam to get involved with the Heart Association – the 100% disabled U.S. Air Force veteran didn’t want people to know what he was going through. Daniel died in 2024 after complications from a widowmaker heart attack. Now, Pam has made it her mission to help people around the country who are experiencing heart disease.
She is starting with southern Arizona.
Pam has personally contributed a transformational gift from the Neal Family Trust to support the American Heart Association’s work in schools. Her gift not only cements her place as a 1924 Circle member of the American Heart Association’s Cor Vitae Society, it’s funding critical CPR work for her community.
Her donation is supporting ongoing CPR training for both students and staff members, the purchase of automated external defibrillators (AEDs), and the development of cardiac emergency response plans so that school staff members know how to respond in the event of a cardiac emergency on campus.
Pam knew this was an area she wanted to focus on when she started seeing news stories about kids who had died from cardiac arrest while playing sports.
“We can't have kids passing out and dying on sports fields,” she said. “I have a whole lot of nieces and nephews who I treasure, and I just can’t see grandparents and aunts and uncles and parents losing their children. They need to know how to do CPR, they need to know about AEDs, and schools have to have them.”
As the 2026 Southern Arizona Heart Ball Chair, she helped fundraise a record-breaking $1.1 million, a large portion of which will fund CPR training kits and AEDs for local schools. She hopes to make a similar impact as the 2027 Southern Arizona Heart Ball Legacy Chair.
It all goes back to Daniel.
“This is about Daniel’s legacy,” Pam said. “He believed in sports. He believed in kids.”
Pam has had her own health scares, including coronary artery disease and cancer. In fact, the week of the Heart Ball, Pam was in the hospital receiving emergency surgery. The port for her cancer treatment had shifted and poked small holes in her heart, a risk she wants everyone going through cancer treatment to be aware of.
It’s a testament to Pam’s lifelong cowgirl attitude that she made it home from surgery a few days before the Heart Ball, and then donned her ballgown and boots as planned. She’s determined to not let her health hold her back.
She stays active by hiking, swimming and playing tennis. She is also set to begin a master’s degree program in public administration in January 2027. She hopes it will help her with her volunteer work with both the American Heart Association and veterans.
When it comes to heart health, Pam wants everyone to stay active – and social. “You can’t become an isolated person. Even if it’s 15 minutes, walk down the street and come back. That 15 minutes can change your life.”
