James Ragland/ Dallas Morning News

I figured when four transplant patients at Baylor University Medical Center died of rabies, the folks who run the local organ-donor program might face a backlash.

That hasn't happened. And that's great news.

In fact, there's a bunch of good news this week on the organ-donor front. But let's deal with that big rabies scare first.

In the month since those tragic deaths, more people have become acutely aware of the need for organ donors, and they're not turning their backs."It was probably a couple of days after the initial announcement, we had two African-American families who donated organs from their children," said Pam Silvestri, the community-education director for the Southwest Transplant Alliance.

The families are from Allen and Tyler, and each lost a small child to a fatal accident. "Both of those families said, 'All this story did was raise our awareness of the need, and it certainly didn't scare us,' "Ms. Silvestri said.

The overriding concern was that people might look cynically at what happened to the family of the 20-year-old Texarkana, Ark., man whose death from rabies was not discovered until his infected organs had claimed other lives.

Rather than finding some solace in seeing their son live on in others, the family was tormented by the awful news.

"Our concern was that people might look at this and say ... 'We want to do a good thing, but we don't want it to turn on us,' "Ms. Silvestri explained.

So it's great that the local donor program has so many good ambassadors, such as Betty Culbreath, the former director of Dallas County's Health and Human Services Department. Mrs. Culbreath had a liver transplant in October and, nine months later, she's still singing the praises of the organ-donor program.

"If it hadn't been for organ donations," she said, "I'd be dead or really ill right now."

How old is she?

"I'm 63, but I feel like I'm 40," she quipped.

Ms. Culbreath, who is black, also has played a significant role in getting minorities to become organ donors. She allowed photographers to document her trip to and from the hospital to help allay any public fears about transplants.

"They shot me going into the hospital, and they came back and shot me coming out," she said. "And I looked healthy. I wasn't limping to the car." More minorities seem to be getting the message.

Sunday is National Minority Donor Day, and Ms. Silvestri said that is a good time to remind black and Hispanic families in particular of the need for donors.

Here's some more of that good news that I promised. Last year, the Hispanic family organ-donor consent rate (76 percent) exceeded the consent rate of whites (75 percent) in the Dallas area - and both are way above the national average.

Black families consented 46 percent of the time, which is the national average.

"We do have work to do, however, in the African-American community," Ms. Silvestri pointed out. "In Dallas, while 17.2 percent of donors were African-American in 2003 (which is a high number), 25.7 percent of recipients were African-American."

Overall, blacks and Hispanics each make up about 13 percent of the nation's organ donors, Ms. Silvestri said, noting that the two groups have come a long way in recent years in reaching that target.

But unfortunately, she said, minorities are overrepresented on the waiting list for organs - which means there needs to be an even bigger push.

The Southwest Transplant Alliance has a minority-donation education project that has helped boost the numbers in Dallas, and now it's using a state grant to peddle the program across the state.

One last piece of good news. On Friday, the Texas Rangers will host the team's 10th annual Organ Donor Game. Before that, the Southwest Transplant Alliance will host a 4:30 p.m. softball game featuring a team of area transplant recipients against a team of media personalities.

"Each of the recipients playing softball play like they've never been sick a day in their lives," Ms. Silvestri said. "In fact, they've all defied death to make the team."

And the media hounds? Well, all I can say is that they'll show up.