News Stories
| 5/6/10 | Giving Thanks: Organ donor families meet |
El Paso Times By Ramón Rentería
EL PASO -- Eula Tetirick wiped away tears and handed Irene Garcia a bouquet of red roses. The two grieving mothers were brought together by children they lost.
"I just wanted to hug your neck so badly," Tetirick said as she approached Garcia's Central El Paso home on a sun-splashed morning. "It's a dream come true."
Tetirick and her husband John flew in from Aurora, Colo., to thank Garcia for donating her son's heart and lungs to their daughter, Tammy Martin, who died 20 months after the transplant surgery.
Garcia's 13-year-old son, Jaime, was buried four years ago Thursday, the day his mother reconstructed his life for the Colorado couple.
"What a beautiful boy. What a beautiful boy," Eula Tetirick said as she looked at pictures of Jaime Garcia in different stages of his short life: dancing, celebrating birthdays, hanging out with cousins and acting silly.
Jaime's family decided to donate his organs for transplant after he was declared brain-dead in early May 2006. He received severe head injuries when his bicycle slammed into a moving car at Pershing and Rosewood, just down the street from his home.
Jaime's heart and lungs extended the life of the Tetiricks' seriously ill daughter for almost two years.
Tammy Martin, born with a heart defect and described as a kind-hearted woman even in her frail health later in life, waited seven and a half years for a heart and lungs transplant. She died Feb. 21, 2008, after spending 660 days in the hospital and becoming too sick for the transplant to succeed, her family said. She was 48.
Irene Garcia told the Tetiricks that it seemed that her angelito -- a cornerback and defensive end and generous and popular student at Wiggs Middle School -- wanted to keep living. His football jersey, No. 95, was later autographed by his friends and classmates, who also dedicated a football season and the 2007 yearbook to him.
"I think it was an angel or God just touching me. Something told me he needed to continue living," Garcia said. "We had never thought of donating, but he continued living through others."
One of Jaime's kidneys was transplanted in Jeana Johnson, a Longview, Texas, woman who has become friends with his mother. Garcia still waits to meet the recipient of Jaime's other kidney, another El Paso boy who was also 13.
"I know his name. Maybe he's still not ready," Garcia said.
Two mothers, once strangers, shared stories of two children who had much in common.
At Tammy's funeral, the family released 11 escort doves and then a 12th, symbolic of a daughter ascending to heaven. Various witnesses said three doves kept circling above the cemetery at Jaime's funeral.
Garcia, an El Paso Head Start teacher, never met the recipient of her son's heart and lungs. But Tammy Martin sent a card expressing gratitude for the unselfish act of giving her and others a second chance.
Martin said that when she was born, doctors told her parents she might not live 20 years. Later, they said she probably would not live five years without a transplant.
A columnist for that now-defunct Denver newspaper said Martin once went trick-or-treating and donated all the treats to a neighborhood boy who was too sick to do it on his own.
In that thank-you card sent to Irene Garcia, Martin said she was still in the hospital 16 months after the transplant, fighting complications, but was optimistic that she would improve and go home someday.
"I want to sleep in my own bed again and take my dog for a walk for the first time, go back to work and enjoy life," she said.
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