May 11, 2005

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Palo Alto Online

The circle of life

by Casey Reivich

Five years ago, Gil and Donna Warren's youngest son Tyler was in need of a new heart. He suffered from congenital heart disease and had already undergone eight life-saving open-heart surgeries. Without a transplant, Tyler would die.

Tyler was put on an organ transplant wait list. It was a tense time for the Palo Alto family. After 101 days of waiting, Tyler got a donor.

Because donor identity is protected, the Warrens only knew that the heart donation was from a 20-year old Latino American man from Fresno who had been killed in a car accident. Although there is a costly downside -- Tyler must take 25-30 pills a day for the rest of his life and is often sick -- the Warrens know they are lucky.

Five years later they got a chance to give back when another of their sons tragically died in a car accident.

"You never know. Sometime in your lifetime you'll know somebody, be related to somebody, or you yourself will need a transplant or a tissue transplant," Gil said.

These experiences have made the Warren family vocal advocates and educators on organ donation. Gil and Donna are lead volunteers at the California Donor Transplant Network. Donor advocates like Donna and Gil Warren lobbied hard for the new donor registry, an online organ and tissue donor registry launched in April by the state of California. Anyone can indicate whether they care to be a donor on the Web site. For the first time, a California donor's wishes are explicit and legally binding.

"There's such a lack of available organs and tissues. It's going to help increase the number. It's going to save a lot of lives and enhance a lot of lives," said Gil.

That's one reason the Warrens pushed for their son's tissue to be donated after the car accident. At 3 p.m., the day after Thanksgiving, police officers came to the Warren's home to tell them that their 27-year-old son, Jesse, had been killed in a car accident. He was heading home in his Chevrolet Camaro. While exiting at Page Mill Road he spun out of control and crashed into a light pole.

Gil and Donna immediately wanted to see Jesse. The police took them to the coroner's office in San Jose. As soon as they saw their son they him to be an organ donor. "I said, 'It's not over'. He's an organ donor'," Donna told the coroner.

Jesse had the pink organ donor sticker on the back of his driver's license, but the coroner thought the time had elapsed to take action. Donna and Gil Warren knew better.

The Warrens knew it was too late for Jesse's vital organs -- an individual has to be on mechanical support to donate -- but they also knew his tissue, eyes, ligaments, and veins were still usable.

Donna insisted the coroner call the University of San Francisco tissue bank.

"They talked to me and told me what they would like and what we could give. They had one and a half hours left of the day to be able to recover everything we gave," Donna said.

Doctors from the USCF tissue bank rushed down to the coroner's office in San Jose.

"They treat the body with great respect. They honor that person as a human being so as the family makes decisions after the passing of their loved ones they're able to have the proper ceremony to honor that person," said Gil.

Unfortunately, many families in the face of such tragedy would not know what to do. And often, the pink dot is an ineffective guide. It is not explicit, it can even fall off, and a family can ultimately override it.

The Warrens, however, because of Tyler's experience, knew Jesse would want to donate his organs.

"Jesse and Tyler were alone together when we got the phone call that they had a heart for Tyler. So it was almost like there was a sense for us that there was this connection. We knew that Jesse truly felt that if that (donation) was a possibility he would have wanted it," said Donna.

"Kind of like completing the circle of life," Gil added.

On Dec. 3, 2004, more than 700 people gathered at Unity Palo Alto Community Church to share memories about Jesse Warren. Everyone in the family agreed that Jesse would not want a funeral. He would want a celebration.

"There were so many people who got up there and told stories about Jesse that we didn't even know. It was such an amazing experience for us," Donna remembered.

When Donna and Gil talked about Jesse, the heaviness of the past year seemed to lift temporarily. They both lit up when speaking about him.

"He treated people like gold. He affected so many people," Donna said. To register on Donate Life California, visit http://www.donatelifecalifornia.org/.

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