By Ramon Renteria / El Paso Times

Jaime Garcia couldn't stand to see others suffer.

He always gave a dollar or two to the beggars outside the Walgreens near his Central El Paso home.

At Wiggs Middle School, the 13-year-old seventh-grader with the confident smile would often pay buy lunch for those who didn't have lunch money.

So it seemed quite appropriate that this young man that the girls called "papi chulo" -- or handsome dude -- would keep on sharing after he died.

"When they told me he was brain-damaged, it was like him telling me that he wanted to live in someone else," Garcia's mother, Irene, said Tuesday, moments before she said adios to her only child, the son who made everybody laugh and who loved expensive cologne.

 
Thirty to 40 relatives and friends embraced in a tearful prayer circle before doctors at Thomason Hospital started recovering and preparing his organs for distribution to patients around the nation.

Garcia suffered severe head injuries Sunday when his bicycle slammed into a moving car at the intersection of Rosewood and Pershing streets. His mother and father, Jaime Garcia Sr., decided to donate his organs for transplant.

"Three children and one adult will be saved," Pam Silvestri of the Southwest Transplant Alliance in Dallas said. "Jaime's heart and lungs will save a 46-year-old woman in Colorado. His liver, intestines and pancreas will save a 16-year-old in Pennsylvania."

One of Jaime's kidneys stayed in El Paso to save another 13-year-old, and the other kidney was scheduled to go to another Texas child, according to Silvestri.
Irene Garcia clutched her teenage son's wallet, caressed his pictures and cried thinking of the son who wanted her to go to college, the son who loved to dance and had so many friends that he was going to participate in three quincea eras this year.

Jaime was returning from practice for the first quincea era, scheduled later in May, when the accident occurred.

Jaime always looked after his mother, appeared a little jealous when she talked about the 4- and 5-year-olds she looks after at the Region 19 Head Start program. He always seemed most at ease helping others.

He would tell his mother, "Mom, I love to help people. That's what I do best."

Jaime's mother and father are divorced. He admired and adored his father so much that he worried that he would not have enough money to buy a Father's Day gift.

"I said, 'Mother's Day is coming. What about me?' " Irene Garcia recalled.

She said Jaime replied: "Mom, you have me here all the time. I'm your present."

On Saturday, Jaime asked his mother to take him shopping Downtown, where he bought a bottle of his favorite fragrance.

His mother clutches that memory and says the bottle of Giorgio Armani is now the gift her son meant to buy later for his father.

Jaime danced with 16 girls in the Ballet Folkl rico Nahui Olin Internacional.

"He was well-liked. He was a good kid," said Lola Alvarado, mother of one of the girls in the group. "Only God knows why this happened."

At Wiggs Middle School, teachers and other school officials described Jaime as a charismatic young man, an athlete who participated in track and played cornerback and defensive end for the Wiggs Wolverines -- a popular student.

"He always tried his best, never complained," Wiggs coach Robert Cordero Jr. said. "He wasn't a starter, but always gave it 110 percent."

The football team is dedicating next fall's season to Garcia and plans to sign and frame Garcia's jersey, No. 95.

Wiggs students, some still healing from the accidental hiking death of Wiggs ex-student Milan Pacillas in the Franklin Mountains in 2003, printed a T-shirt in memory of Garcia, the seventh-grader with a positive attitude.

"He just had a radiance about him, brought happiness everywhere he went," Wiggs Assistant Principal Angie Silvaggio said. "The loss we're feeling is very profound. He didn't have a selfish bone in his body."

Silvaggio is telling students to take time for healing, but also to remember Jaime's life and contribution to others.

"His mom has so little to ask of us -- and that is to just pray for him," Silvaggio said.

• In the United States, more than 91,000 people are awaiting an organ transplant.
• Texas has more than 6,500 people in need of lifesaving organs.
• In El Paso, an estimated 100 people need organ transplants at any time.
• Information: Southwest Transplant Alliance, (800) 788-8058 or www.organ.org.