BOSTON -- Heart disease is America's No. 1 killer, causing nearly 1 million deaths each year.

NewsCenter 5's Liz Brunner reported that many people ignore a major warning sign, a family history of heart problems. As one local man learned, you can't choose your family, but you can choose to live healthy.

Carol and Ron Recchino are planning a party. In two weeks, Ron will turn 46. He will be the first in his family to make it that far.

"When my father died at 45, I remember people all saying, 'He's so young,'" Ron said.

A sudden heart attack killed Ron's father when Ron was just 16.

"There was no, you know, 'Let's go check everybody's cholesterol: let's see how everybody else in the family is doing,'" Ron said.

So, Ron and his older brother Rick went on with their lives -- smoking and eating whatever they wanted, until Rick collapsed and died of a massive heart attack in 1994.

"A week shy of his 37th birthday, and it was absolutely devastating," Ron's wife, Carol, said.

It was then Carol insisted that Ron get a checkup. The results could not have been worse.

"Ron's right artery was 100 percent blocked and his left main artery was closing down. The consensus was unanimous that they needed to do bypass surgery," she said.

They needed to do quadruple bypass surgery, but it was almost too late. While on the operating table, Ron's heart stopped beating. For 15 minutes, doctors manually pumped Ron's heart muscle as they cleared his arteries. He owes much to his surgeons -- and his wife.

"I'm alive because of her. I'd be dead," he said.

Doctors say too often people with heart disease ignore their family history and their symptoms.

"People tend to think nothing bad will happen to them. People who don't think they're necessarily having disease still need to be screened to determine what their risks are, what can be identified and to be treated so they avoid their having the same fate as the other family members," Brigham and Women's Hospital's Dr. Kenneth Baughman said.

The Recchinos refuse to make the same mistake twice. Their children have already been tested, and daughter Tracy -- at just 18 -- is already showing signs of high cholesterol. Ron is just thankful she knows what he didn't.

In lieu of presents for his birthday, Ron is asking his family and friends to make a donation to the American Heart Association. He and Carol, along with Baughman, Brunner and thousands of others, will be walking in the American Heart Association's Boston Heart Walk on Sept. 17.