Here’s a look ahead at what is going on in San Diego sports May 16th-22nd.
 
GOLF: Monday morning at 7:30 a.m. the Barona Creek Golf Course hosts a PGA U.S. Open qualifier.
 
PADRES: The Friars are back downtown this week. After an off day Monday the Padres begin division play with the San Francisco Giants Tuesday-Thursday before the Dodgers come in Friday-Sunday.
 
NPSL: It’s the second leg of the San Diego Derby Saturday night! The Albion Pros host the North County Battalion at Mission Bay High School for city bragging rights. The match starts at 5 p.m.
 
UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO TOREROS:
-MENS GOLF: Monday-Wednesday at the Tucson NCAA Regional.
-BASEBALL: Wednesday vs. Arizona State 6 p.m., Thursday and Friday vs. Gonzaga 6 p.m. and Saturday 6:30 p.m.
 
SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY AZTECS:
-MENS GOLF: Monday-Wednesday at the NCAA Albuquerque Regional.
-BASEBALL: Tuesday at UC Riverside 6 p.m., Thursday and Friday at San Jose State University 6 p.m. and Saturday 1 p.m.
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO TRITONS:
-MENS TENNIS: Wednesday at Northwest Missouri State in Denver, CO 4 p.m.

UC San Diego Health is using a new technology in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) that is saving the lives of infants.

The Heart Rate Observation System, or HeRO, can predict the risk of life-threatening infections up to 24 before they appear in severely premature or critically ill newborns.

HeRO has an innovative monitoring technology that uses an algorithm to detect slight changes in the baby’s heartbeat that could be an early sign of infection.

Infection is the leading cause of death in infants, including sepsis — a bacterial infection that is highly dangerous to babies born three pounds or less.

“The challenge with diagnosing sepsis is a lot of symptoms for the early stages of the infection are subtle and nonspecific,” said Erika Fernandez, MD, director of the NICU at UC San Diego Health. “With the HeRO technology, we can detect symptoms of sepsis up to 24 hours before the infection actually happens. This allows us to begin an investigation and intervene with treatment before a baby becomes critically ill.”

UC San Diego Health is the first provider in San Diego County to use the technology. Traditionally, doctors and nurses must rely on their own observations to detect signs of infection.

HeRO reports vital sign trends much earlier than the human eye or traditional equipment and requires no additional wiring to the baby.

“This state-of-the-art technology lets babies be babies, and mothers can breastfeed without worrying about tangling up or unplugging wires,” said Lawrence Prince, MD, PhD, chief in the Division of Neonatology at UC San Diego Health. “It makes for a much less intimidating experience for families and a highly improved monitoring approach for medical staff.

The technology is expected to reduce mortality rates in the NICU by 20%.

“Physicians and nurses can evaluate a situation much more thoroughly,” said Prince. “When I look at the data on the monitor, I can ask myself, ‘is there something more going on with the patient and do we need to do further testing?’”

The monitoring system represents part of the next generation of technology, and helps UCSD “provide the highest quality of comprehensive and compassionate care to NICU babies so they can thrive and go home with their families as soon as possible,” Fernandez added.

A 23-year-old woman was bitten by a small nurse shark in Boca Raton, Florida, on Sunday.

Crews responded to the incident located at 1400 N Ocean Blvd. at Boca Raton Beach.

Crews arrived to find the 23-year-old female with a 2-foot nurse shark still attached to her right forearm, according to Boca Raton Fire Rescue Services.

The shark had been killed prior to the Fire Departments arrival but was still attached to her arm.

The woman was transported to Boca Raton Regional Hospital in stable condition with the shark still attached to her arm.

For the first time, the Amgen Tour of California, the biggest cycling race in America, came to San Diego, and local businesses are benefiting.

The cyclists wrapped up their 108 mile loop around San Diego Sunday to continue their week-long tour north, finishing in Sacramento.

The racers biked through Balboa Park, the Gaslamp, Coronado, among other places and brought in big business with them.

“There’s diehard fans who keep up with it so they're bringing hotel business and restaurants and stuff,” Bike Revolution employee Matt Guerrero said.

Bike Revolution in downtown has already seen an increase in customers because of the tour. Some customers have rented bikes to follow the 18 world- class teams.

“I'm just super excited to come and see them ride on the roads that I ride myself,” cyclist Jim Fogelman told NBC 7.

Organizers say the Amgen Tour attracts more than 170 competitors and two million spectators.

Meron Andom and her crew drove down here from Los Angeles to see their favorite Eritrean cyclist, Daniel Teklehaimanot.

“He's our king of the mountain and we're here to support him,” Andom told NBC 7. 

After such a great vacation in San Diego, Andom says she’ll visit again.

“San Diego is one of the most beautiful cities…so you can't help it but come," she said. 

“Not only does it mean people are spending money and getting tourism in San Diego, Amgen does great things for health care research and with cycling being such big thing with a healthy lifestyle the two go hand and hand,” Fogelman explained.

Organizers estimate that the tour will generate a total of $100 million for the San Diego region.

For the abandoned dogs at Carson Animal Shelter, every day is an agonizing wait for somebody to come and take them home.

But a 6-year-old boy with autism is looking to brighten their days one story at a time.

Every Thursday, Jacob from La Habra brings his little mat and sits down in front of Pirate the pit bull's cage to read to him.

"He likes it...that makes dogs friendly," Jacob said.

Jacob's mother says her son has loved books ever since he was a baby, but it seemed to be one of the only things he was interested in.

"I noticed things were different," said Katherine Tumalan, Jacob's mother. "He didn't want to play with other children."

His parents learned he had autism around age 2 when he seemed to lose all verbal skills.

"It was really hard knowing something was different and your child's going to have this all his life," Tumalan said.

Jacob's parents worried about his lack of progress, until one day about a year ago, his aunt Lisa Ferranti brought him to the shelter.

Ferranti, an animal rescue worker, instantly noticed the special bond he had with the animals.

"Jacob is so calming," Ferranti said. "He walks through and he's not yelling or banging on the cages. He comes with a book and his mat and sets it up, and the dogs just listen."

Both Tumalan and Ferranti say Jacob's friendship with Pirate is making a difference for both of them.

"I think it helps socialize the dogs with children, and at the same time helped Jake socialize with animals more," Ferranti said.

Jacob says dogs like Pirate just need a little extra love and believes their special story time seems to help while they wait to find a forever home.

"If I read to the dogs they will come out of their cages and find homes," Jacob said. "They have to find new homes because they are alone."

Jacob's family was happy to report that he now reads at a third-grade level after all of his practice.

Pirate the pit bull also has a happy ending in sight: He'll soon be leaving the shelter to stay with a rescue worker for further training so he can find a "fur-ever" home.

For more information on the Carson Animal Shelter, visit their Facebook page here.

Tourists were ticketed and forced to release a baby bison from the back of their SUV at Yellowstone National Park, NBC News reported. 

Two foreign tourists, a father and son duo, were worried that the calf was too cold, according to a witness who snapped a photo of the bison in their vehicle.

Rob Heusevelet, the father of a student on a field trip, told the East Idaho News of nearby Idaho Falls that rangers ordered the men to remove the bison and warned them that they could be in trouble for having the animal. The National Park Service forbids visitors from approaching within 25 feet from large animals. 

"They didn't care," Heusevelet told the news site. "They sincerely thought they were doing a service and helping that calf by trying to save it from the cold."

The pilot who died in a fatal crash in the Angeles National Forest Sunday morning was a member of the Plus One Flyers club at Montgomery Field, the Chief of Operations at Plus One Flyers confirmed.

He said the pilot was experienced and had been with the club for five years. The pilot had logged 20 flying hours just in the last month.

The COO said the pilot’s death is like losing a family member. In fact they'd just flown together last week. Shane Terpstra, the Plus One Flyers Safety Officer agreed.

“Any time you lose a fellow aviator it’s always a difficult time," Terpstra said. “Difficult rather for anything like this where we lose a fellow aviator. It’s a small community.”

The Cessna single-engine plane took off from Montgomery Field Sunday morning just after 7:30 heading for Santa Monica Airport. Air traffic control said they lost contact with the plane 17 miles east of Van Nuys before it went off radar.

“They’re all maintained to a high set of standards,” Terpstra said of the planes. “They’re looked at once a month at least by a mechanic who does oil changes, that kind of thing, so they're looked at very often not only by mechanics but by pilots and members flying.”

The cause of the crash has not been determined yet.

“It’s tough. The best we can do is learn from any aviation crash,” Terpstra said. “There’s always some take away…We just try to learn from it and take it to other members of the club and other pilots.”

Illicit marijuana farming in remote corners of California is threatening already endangered salmon and steelhead trout by sucking up water from streams. Growers are cutting away the forest and poisoning the Pacific fisher, the northern spotted owl and other wildlife with pesticides and fertilizers. Pot grown indoors consumes as much electricity for air-conditioning, lightening, fans and humidifiers as 1 million homes.

As California prepares to regulate medical marijuana farming in the midst of an historic four-year drought and possibly legalize its recreational use, environmentalists are looking forward to ecological protections being demanded of cannabis growers.

"There are some really serious environmental impacts associated with the industry," said Jennifer Carah, a freshwater ecologist for the Nature Conservancy in California.

And although the state is now turning attention to the degradation pot farms can cause, unscrupulous growers will remain a problem — whether because they are unwilling to pay new fees and taxes or because they are export marijuana to states where it is not legal. And because marijuana remains illegal under federal law, farms may stay hidden in forested, undeveloped watersheds so as not to gain the attention of federal authorities.

"The black market problem is not necessarily going to go away in the face of recreational legalization in California," Carah said. "It's still going to be an issue more than likely."

California became the first state to legalize marijuana for medical use in 1996, but until last fall, the industry was unregulated and environmental protections were lacking. Legislation signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in October calls for the state to begin issuing permits for commercial growers in 2018.

California will award licenses only to commercial growers who also have local permits while giving leeway to communities to decide what kind of farms they want within their borders. Some cities are already approving applications for marijuana cultivators — among them Desert Hot Springs in Riverside County and Adelanto in San Bernardino County — and wrestling with its particular demands. Other counties, Nevada and Shasta counties for example, have outlawed outdoor cultivation.

The new regulations come as Californians will vote in November on whether to approve recreational use -- now that backers of an initiative have collected enough signatures to put it on the ballot.

State agencies will have the authority to regulate marijuana cultivation — to enforce compliance with water rights and to require that cannabis farms meet other existing environmental regulations.

"So bringing it out of the dark and regulating it like any other agricultural crop," Carah said.

Hezekiah Allen, executive director of the California Growers Association, said its 550 members, small, independent growers throughout the state, want the ban on cannabis cultivation to end, but the association has not yet taken a position on the current ballot initiative.

After two decades of operating without regulations, growers are now facing licensing, inspections and other requirements.

"That was a tectonic shift in cannabis policy here in California and the dust hasn't quite settled yet," he said.

Allen said that his organization was eager to support regulation because some of the marijuana growers are running sustainable farms, storing and recycling water and not damaging aquatic habitat.

"But there's also some of the most egregious environmental crimes in the country taking place," he said. "And with the absence of regulation and the absence of transparency in the marketplace, there's no way to differentiate between a criminal grower and a legitimate grower."

California's agricultural industry uses 35 million acre feet of water a year -- the amount of water needed to cover an acre with a foot of water. The cannabis industry uses only 10,000 to 15,000 acre feet, he said. Alfalfa for example uses several million gallons of water a year, he said.

The California market is large -- $10 billion to $30 billion by some estimates -- and the industry expects it to continue to grow. Between 60 to 70 percent of the marijuana consumed in the United States is thought to be grown in California -- although those estimates also are uncertain.

A state report prepared on marijuana policy, whose steering committee was headed by Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, noted that environmental protection was a particular concern given the size of the cannabis industry in California. Rural producing regions include the so-called "Emerald Triangle" counties or Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity. Other marijuana cultivation takes place on public lands -- the 1.3 million acres of state park land and the more than 8 million acres of national forest and wilderness, the report said.

"This is a challenge for enforcement agents and regulators," it said. "It also means cracking down on these illegal grows will take a funded and coordinated effort from federal, state and local officials to ensure our public lands are being protected."

One of the most serious problems has been water diversion by growers who do not have water rights. Marijuana farms have dried up streams, killing fish and other animals and posing a particular threat to the threatened Coho salmon. Dirt that runs off into streams has smothered the fish habitat.

Heavy use of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides has polluted waterways and killed animals. Eighty percent of dead Pacific fishers, a wolverine that hunts small rodents, that were recovered in the wildness had been exposed to rat and other poison, researchers with the University of California found.

As far as electrical use, in 2012, 3 percent of California's went toward growing marijuana indoors, according to another University of California study.

Environmentalists say that the state will need at least $25 million a year to regulate cannabis cultivation and enforce environmental regulations and more than $100 million a year for the first five years to clean up the damage done by illegal marijuana farms and to restore the land they used.

If the ballot initiative is approved, the state would impose an excise tax on retail sales of 15 percent of sales price, and cultivation taxes of $9.25 per ounce of flowers and $2.75 per ounce of leaves. Tax revenues to be collected could be at a minimum $200 million a year for environmental protection, Carah said.

"We feel pretty pleased with the seriousness with which the legislature and the initiative drafters have taken the environmental impact," she said.

KTLA meteorologist who was asked to cover up her dress while live on air after viewers' comments that it was too revealing, said the station didn't force her to put on the cardigan and that it was all part of a joke, Today.com reported.

In the middle of the forecast, Liberté Chan's co-anchor dangled a gray cardigan in her direction.

"What's going on?" she asked. "You want me to put this on? Why? 'Cause it's cold?"

The reason, according to her co-anchor, was that they were "getting a lot of emails" about her sparkling black dress being inappropriate for morning TV.

But many on social media didn't like the co-anchor's move, with one user calling it "deplorable."

Chan said Sunday in a blog post she "was simply playing along with my co-anchor's joke, and if you've ever watched the morning show, you know we poke fun at each other all the time."

With his wife and 18-year-old brother-in-law in tow, Jaffrey Khan left behind the moneyed, manicured precincts of his Bay Area home and offered his services to ISIS, NBC News learned from a thumb-drive it received from an ISIS defector.

Jaffrey Khan's father, Salem Khan, suggested his son was a lost soul and an mark for bloodthirsty fanatics selling the fantasy of an Islamic caliphate.

"He was gullible," said Salem Khan, who lives in a $2 million house and runs a medical marketing company in Palo Alto. "You know the people looking to scam you out of money or something? They're looking for people like him."

Through the documents on the thumb-drive NBC News pieced together the story of a single cell with three members. Jaffrey Khan and Rasel Raihan enlisted with ISIS on July 11, 2014, the documents show. Though she is not in the files, they were joined by Zakia Nasrin, now 24, who is Rasel's older sister and Jaffrey's wife. 

It's the story of two immigrant families who built new lives in America only to have the heirs to their dream join an organization hell-bent on destroying it.

Three juveniles and one adult were taken into custody following a high-speed police pursuit Monday that ended when the suspects' vehicle flipped over in the Mid-City area.

San Diego Police Officers believed there were weapons in the car when they attempted to pull over a vehicle at approximately 12:40 p.m.

After a short pursuit, the vehicle rolled over and four people ran from the vehicle, according to SDPD Lt. Christopher Knighten.

One witness reported seeing one suspect run across Federal with a gun in his hand.

Two semi-automatic handguns were found, Knighten said.

The vehicle crashed and rolled over near Federal and Home, officers said.

There were four people in the car, police said. Three were described as juveniles by police. All were transported to a nearby hospital with injuries, police said.

No officers were injured.

Police said the suspects were wanted for displaying a handgun.

The location of the crash is north of State Route 94, west of Interstate 805 and east of Interstate 15.

Some witnesses reported seeing six people coming from the vehicle but Knighten said that police know for sure there were four.

San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) has pledged to spend $7.5 million over the next five years on a campaign to promote the adoption of zero-emission vehicles.

SDG&E announced their plans to educate people about electric vehicles in conjunction with a program already approved by the California Public Utilities Commission to install more than 3,000 charging stations in the region.

Promoting electric vehicles is one of the best ways to fight climate change since the transportation sector accounts for approximately 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in California, according to SDG&E.

The utility plans to hold "EV ride-and-drives" where consumers will get the opportunity to test drive different models from different manufacturers.

Mayor Kevin Faulconer, SDG&E’s Chairman, President and CEO Jeff Martin and Chula Vista Mayor Mary Casillas Salas all spoke at the launch.

"Clean energy, clean technology; it's exactly what we're doing here in San Diego," Mayor Faulconer said at the press conference. "I was very proud this year, as we move forward on our city's Climate Action Plan, to be absolute nationwide leaders when it comes to sustainability and when it comes to renewable energy. 

SDG&E’s goal is to bring vehicle chargers to every city in San Diego and the southern part of Orange County.

SDG&E will also be joined by the first 15 to 20 local participants who are seeking to install electric vehicle charging stations as part of Power Your Drive, a pilot program to install 3,500 charging stations at multi-family communities, businesses and underserved neighborhoods. This program is expected to help reduce obstacles to electric vehicle ownership and maximize energy generated by the sun and the wind to charge vehicles when renewable energy is plentiful.

The businesses and community groups involved include American Lung Association, Bayview Baptist Church, Circulate San Diego, City of Chula Vista, City of National City, City of San Diego, County of San Diego, Cuyamaca College, Escondido Union High School District, Gildred Co., H.G. Fenton Company, I Love A Clean San Diego, Jewish Family Services, Menlo Equities, Palomar College, San Diego Housing Federation, Sea World, Sony, UCSD, and UTC Aerospace, according to an SDG&E news release.

Those interested in learning more about the education campaign and EV charging station program can visit sdge.com/poweryourdrive.

The number of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty nationwide dropped by nearly 20 percent in 2015, with 41 officers killed as a result of criminal acts, the FBI announced Monday, NBC News reported.

The data seems to provide a counterweight to arguments that increased criticism of police, inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, has led to them being targeted for violence.

David Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who researches police behavior, said the decline is likely due to improvements in training and equipment, and advances in the treatment of traumatic injuries.

It also may be linked to historic drops in violent crime, Harris said.

Clean up continued Monday, three days after an overturned tanker truck spilled 3,700 gallons of diesel fuel into the San Diego River, upstream of Mission Bay Park's Southern Wildlife Preserve.

"It's a pretty particularly bad place to have spilled because of its ability to affect so many different habitats so quickly," Rebecca Schwartz of the San Diego Audubon Society said."

Crews were onsite all weekend working to clean up the road and river.

The San Diego Police Department (SDPD) said the accident happened Friday around 6 p.m. when the driver, for unknown reasons, lost control on a ramp from Interstate 8 to Morena Boulevard and crashed.

The ramp was reopened Sunday, but part of Friars road (where it passes underneath Morena Boulevard) remained closed Monday as crews cleaned up. Morena Boulevard has since reopened. 

Crews were able to prevent the spill from reaching the ocean, but cleanup in the preserve may take up to a month with brush and soil removal, Alex Bell from the County Department of Environmental Health said.

"It's going to have some pretty significant local impacts where the spill occurred," Schwartz said. "I think it's also indicative of how sensitive we are to these kinds of spills...This one in and of itself might not be huge, but if we have a lot of these spills on the California coast, the cumulative impact is going to be significant for our wildlife."

According to Schwartz the biggest danger in the preserve is for animals that live in the mud. 

Crews are replacing some asphalt on Friars Road. 

The driver of the tanker suffered minor injuries.

A man accused of running over a City Heights woman and leaving her to die faced a San Diego judge for the first time Monday.

Marco Antonio Gutierrez pleaded not guilty to hit-and-run with injury and assault with a deadly weapon in the death of 29-year-old Jazmine Leigh Ruiz.

Ruiz died April 20 after she was stabbed in the neck and run over by a car, San Diego Police said.

Her body was found in the west alley near Wilson Avenue. Homicide detectives believe the car was used as a weapon to kill the victim after a physical assault.

Ruiz' body was dragged 15 to 20 feet underneath the car, Deputy District Attorney David Bost said in court Monday when asking that bail be increased to $250,000.

Judge David Szumowski agreed to increase the bail and held co-defendant Christina Daniel without bail.

Daniel is accused of stabbing Ruiz in the neck and jugular, probably inside the same car used to run her over by a second suspect, prosecutors said.

Daniel has a long criminal history including allegations of attempted murder as well as convictions in auto theft and carjacking. She has pleaded not guilty to murder in this case. 

Szumowski ordered the news media not to show either defendant's face.

If convicted, Gutierrez faces approximately eight years.

A third suspect is still sought in Ruiz' death. No motive was discussed in court Monday.

The engineer driving the Amtrak train that derailed in Philadelphia last year, killing eight people, may have been distracted by radio traffic, sources close to the investigation told NBC News.

Sources told NBC News that NTSB investigators believe Amtrak 188 engineer Brandon Bostian was likely distracted by radio dispatchers prior to the May 12, 2015, crash in Philadelphia.

The train, headed from Washington, D.C. to New York, entered a sharp curve at 106 mph — more than twice the posted speed limit — when it crashed. Eight people died and more than 200 were injured.

The NTSB will hold a hearing in Washington, D.C., Tuesday where board members will vote on the final report in the investigation of the deadly derailment.

NBC News reports the probable cause for the crash may change during the meeting.

The NTSB released 160 documents earlier this year detailing the crash, including two interviews with Bostian in which he described the events leading up to it. In one interview, Bostian told investigators he had a "dream-like" memory of the train going too fast around the curve and hitting the brakes once he realized it was going to tip over.

"I remember holding onto the controls tightly and feeling like, okay well this is it, I'm going over," Bostian said.

Bostian made no mention in either interview however about being distracted by radio dispatch moments before the crash.

While more than 63 years separate Barbara Sue Adkins and Hinsseenee Regassa, the two have one important thing in common.

Adkins, 80, is the oldest graduate at Cuyamaca College, and Regassa, 17, is the youngest graduate from Grossmont College.

“All my life, I had dreamed of going to college, but I was raised in a time and place where women weren’t encouraged to get an education,” said Adkins, a former Navy wife from Kentucky who moved to the West Coast when her first husband was transferred to San Diego. “I did what was the norm, which was to get married and have children.”

Having graduated high school in 1953, Adkins received a certificate of achievement in Child Development in 2016.

With six children, 12 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren Adkins has some experience in caring for children.

She started school in 2010 with a focus on preschool education.

Adkins said she intends to go back to finish her Associate’s degree then get her Bachelor’s.

“I loved every minute of going to Cuyamaca,” Adkins said. “There was never a morning I woke up and dreaded going to school. Kids are my passion, especially the ones with special needs.”

Regassa will be heading to UC Davis in the fall on a soccer scholarship.

She began taking classes at Grossmont College at 16 after passing the California High School Proficiency Exam to earn the legal equivalent of a high school diploma.

“Grossmont has so many resources for students like me, looking to learn more and do great things with their lives,” she said.

She majored in communications and plans to do so again at UC Davis. She has her sights set on professional soccer, music production, photography, and filmmaking. She already has one film to her credit, a short documentary, “Skin,” in which young black girls share stories as victims of racism. The work was shown in the 2014 San Diego Asian Film Festival.

“I like to be challenged,” she said about her busy life.

No matter where they go in life both women will always be able to say they set a record as a 2016 graduate of the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District. There’s no telling what they’ll achieve next.

A San Diego woman was sentenced on Monday to 22 years in prison for helping her husband make and distribute child pornography.

Jennifer Rose Gastelum will serve the 22-year sentence in addition to an 18-year federal punishment she’s already received.

In federal court, Gastelum pleaded guilty on Feb. 10 to two counts of sexual exploitation with a minor related to the 2014 case.

In San Diego County Superior Court, she was convicted of continuous sex abuse of a child and a lewd and lascivious act on a child.

The charges relate to a child pornography case against Gastelum and her estranged husband, Jonathan Gastelum.

Jonathan Gastelum is accused of sharing child porn images with two different law enforcement officers during online chat room visits.

The images allegedly depicted two girls, ages 4 and 6, FBI agents said.

The Gastelums were arrested in October 2014 after agents executed a search warrant at a granny flat behind Jonathan Gastelum’s home on Skyline Drive.

Prosecutors said the victims are family members of the Gastelums.

Jonathan Gastelum was sentenced last week to 15 years to life in prison.

A new study released Monday found that 45 percent of heart attacks in the United States are "silent" — people don't realize they're having them, NBC News reports.

But even though these heart attacks do not cause the classic symptoms of chest or arm pain, they're doing just as much damage as heart attacks that do.

"The outcome of a silent heart attack is as bad as a heart attack that is recognized while it is happening," said Dr. Elsayed Soliman of Wake Forest Baptist Medical center, who led the study.

Julie Llamas Rickman remembers going to the emergency room five years ago thinking her asthma was acting up — she felt short of breath and tired — but the 41-year-old was shocked to learn she had two blockages in her heart, and had had an attack: "I just started crying."

Palomar Medical Center and Pomerado Hospital will be collecting used hearing aids through the end of the month so they can be reconditioned and given to people around the world.

The “So the World May Hear” program recycles hearing aids and fits more than 100,000 for adults and children in over 100 countries each year.

David M. Illich, Au.D, Palomar Health’s Chief of Audiology, is spearheading the campaign.

“Hearing is your main intellectual and cognitive sense,” said Dr. Illich, “And there’s nothing more important in life than communicating with your family and friends.” Dr. Illich has traveled overseas many times to help people hear.

More than 36 million people in the world suffer from debilitating hearing loss, and fewer than 3% have any kind of medical or hearing care, according to Dr. Illich.

“Our goal is to help one-million people worldwide by the year 2020 and we are already at 650,000,” Dr. Illich says. “If you, a loved one, or friend have hearing instruments that are no longer being used, whether they are working or not, we invite you to donate them, so that together we may help the world hear.”

Any part of the hearing aid can be donated, “no matter how broken it is,” Dr. Illich said.

Hearing aids may be donated to Palomar Medical Center and Pomerado Hospital.