Rose Parade float bring solace, community to families of those who donated organ

Rose Parade float bring solace, community to families of those who donated organs

By Ben Baeder, Staff Writer
Posted: 12/30/2011 09:36:51 PM PST

PASADENA - In Wooster, Ohio, college administrator Patrice Smith is living with only one kidney.

Two-thousand-three-hundred miles away, a 26-year-old woman and her family are still trying to figure out why a complete stranger would give away an organ.

"Who does that for people you don't even know?" said Karol Franks, whose daughter, Jenna, received the kidney after her's were destroyed by a rare bladder disease.

"Just talking about it right now, I'm going to start crying again," Franks said.

She was one of hundreds of people involved in this year's Donate Life Rose Parade float. Since 2004, a coalition of organ donation advocacy groups has entered a float in the Rose Parade to remind people about organ donations.

In all, the float will feature images of 72 donors and will have 28 riders who have received organs or tissue. Many of the images, called floragraphs, are meticulously filled in by family members, who use seeds and leaves to bring the images to life.

Pictured on this year's float will be Jose Alfredo Carrillo of El Monte, whose tissue went to about 50 people.

About 112,000 people in the United States are waiting for organ donations, and the needs are especially acute among Latinos, according to statistics from Donate Life.

Dozens of families Thursday attended a ceremony where they fastened roses on the float to remember their loved ones. Among the families was the Mezas of La Habra, who lost Christopher Meza in 2010 when he broke his neck jumping off a boat.

Recipients received Meza's heart, kidneys and liver. And his pancreas was donated to science, said his mother Diane Meza.

Christopher, who was 22 when he died, was 6 feet 3 inches tall and about 240 pounds.

"He was such a fun, outgoing guy," Diane Meza said. "We referred to him as our gentle giant."

Some at the ceremony were overwhelmed as they relived the deaths of loved ones.

Rajiv De Silva of Monrovia clutched a picture of his son, Yohan De Silva, who died in August at age 15. He cried as he told how Monrovia High's football team chanted his son's name after a big game.

"We donated because we knew Yohan was the type of person who always wanted to help people," he said. "We donated everything. His tissue, his organs. His eyes helped somebody. He helped 10 families."

The idea for the Donate Life float came from Gary Foxen, who had received a lung in 1999. He thought a Rose Parade float would help honor those who donated organs. One Legacy, a donor network, got the idea off the ground, entering the first Donate Life float in 2004.

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