PEMBROKE PARK, Fla. – A South Florida mother is pushing to stop a silent killer after losing her own daughter to carbon monoxide poisoning.
"They have an alarm when you don't have your seatbelt on," Barbara Bertot said. "Why isn't there an alarm for when there is an invisible poisonous gas that can kill you?"
Her daughter, Janelle Bertot, 19, was a student at Florida International University in November 2004. She was sitting in a van in the parking lot of the Weston Town Center with her boyfriend.
"They were idling (and) the windows were up," Bertot explained. "But, unfortunately, unbeknown to anyone, the exhaust system was in disrepair."
The next morning the couple was found dead -- both poisoned by invisible, odorless carbon monoxide.
"It was very devastating," Bertot said.
She founded Janelle's Wishing Well with the purpose of educating and stopping more deaths. In 2008, Florida passed Janelle's Law, requiring carbon monoxide alarms for all new building construction.
A carbon monoxide alarm helped save the life of David Masters and his next door neighbor in Fort Lauderdale.
Masters told Local 10 News that he bought the detector because the bedroom of his condominium was next to the garage, a source of teasing from his roommate.
"Whenever I would say something stupid, he would say, 'I think that carbon monoxide is leaking from the garage into your brain,'" Masters explained.
What started as a joke saved lives just two months later. In April 2015, the alarm sounded about midnight. After checking his own garage, Masters went to his neighbor's unit, heard an engine running and called 911.
In that case, it was a keyless ignition vehicle. Local 10 has reported on the carbon monoxide risks when people forget to hit a button and turn off the car -- an issue that's led to several deaths in Florida.
Paramedics found Masters' neighbor collapsed inside, but he survived, thanks to Masters' $30 investment.
Janelle's Wishing Well provides temporary visual carbon monoxide detectors that change color when the dangerous gas is present. But Bertot said that's not enough. She has written letters to automakers pushing for a sensor or alarm inside cars to warn of carbon monoxide.
"I got very nice letters back, you know, that they're very sorry for my loss," she said.
But no federal regulations require it.
"It's a horrendous, horrendous loss," Bertot said. "I don't care how old or how new that car is, the danger is there. Because you don't know what's underneath that car."
A representative for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told Local 10 that the agency is interested in potential automated technologies that could cut down on these deaths and injuries and said some manufacturers have begun to install systems to shut off the engine automatically if it's left running for a period of time.
The NHTSA also recommend people be mindful of anything blocking a car's tailpipe while it's running.
Janelle's Wishing Well hosted a fundraiser Saturday night in Dania Beach, with proceeds going to raise awareness and provide college scholarships for students interested in health care.