By Mike Baird

SANDIA — Victor Edwin “Ed” Burk didn’t have the heart for the life he has known the past 16 years.

It has taken two of them.

With a second heart transplanted into his chest to keep him alive, Burk doesn’t mind all the “two hearts are better than one” jokes, he said. Because with both he has seen six more grandchildren born, built a new home in Sandia for his wife, driven to Alaska three times, and traveled throughout the United States and Canada.

It’s a much closer destination he enjoys most. Burk, 75, said he often can be found “hollering in the stands” at his 9-year-old grandson Scott Meyer’s Orange Grove basketball games.

“He reminds me of myself, lots of tenacity against bigger players,” said the former Mathis High School basketball player.

Burk is one of the longest living heterotopic cardiac transplant patients in the world, said Pam Silvestri with Southwest Transplant Alliance. The heterotopic procedure places the donated heart next to the old heart and takes four times longer than a traditional heart transplant.

Burk’s heart was too weak — a family problem some of his five siblings haven’t survived.

A 21-year-old male donor’s heart available to Burk was too small, so doctors transplanted it next to his.

“They’ve beat together beautifully,” said Burk, a longtime mechanic and owner of a Calallen auto repair shop. “Except sometimes laying on my back I feel both. They’re not in time. It kind of starts me rocking in bed.”

He and his wife of 39 years, Sandi, were invited to speak Friday to a local Red Hat Society about Texas’ organ donor registry.

“If you’re willing to receive, you have to be willing to give,” said Sandi Burk. “We consider it our heart, the greatest gift in our life together. ... He also gives me two gifts for Valentine’s Day, one for each heart.”

The couple’s encouragement to become organ donors has helped dozens of people, she said.

Her brother-in-law became an organ donor after Ed Burk went through his 16-hour heart surgery on May 17, 1993. A year later her sister’s husband had a massive brain hemorrhage at age 68 and died. His liver saved one man, and his bone marrow matched with a 2-year-old girl suffering with leukemia.

The couple said they never forget who to thank for Ed’s extended life.

“We owe the heart donor,” Sandi Burk said. “We put an ornament on our Christmas tree for him each year and always celebrate fiesta-style the day Ed’s second life began.”

Ed Burk now wants to repay his heart surgeon, Dr. O. Howard Frazier.

“My hearts have to keep on ticking a few more years,” Burk said, “because if I make 20 years my doc gets a gold watch. I owe him that.”

Organ Donation Facts

• There are approximately 74 organ transplants daily in the U.S.

• A single donor can save or enhance the lives of as many as 50 people

• Approximately 27,000 patients began new lives last year after organ transplants

• An average of 18 people die each day while waiting for an organ

• More than 100,000 people are waiting for an organ transplant in the U.S.

• About 600 of those waiting are 5 years old or younger

Register as an organ donor: www.donatelifetexas.org or Department of Public Safety office

More information: 800-788-8058 or www.organ.org

Source: Southwest Transplant Alliance