A mother's tragedy gives friend life through kidney transplant

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A mother's tragedy gives friend life through kidney transplant

By ALLYSON BIRD

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

For two Vietnamese women, casual friends and nail salon co-workers, devastating news hit at the same time.

One woman learned she was in the final stages of kidney failure and primed to stay on dialysis the rest of her life. The other woman's 15-year-old daughter lay in a hospital bed, her brain shifted and swollen after she jumped from a moving car.

Lucas Cannistraci/Staff Photographer

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With a photo of her daughter, Antonia Le, behind her, Lori Le (right), chats with her friend Canh Phuong Tran. Tran received one of Antonia's kidneys when the girl died after jumping from a moving car.
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Caught in their separate hells, the women soon realized that each had what the other needed.

For Lori Le, that meant something to help her memorialize and move past her daughter's unexpected death. And for Canh Phuong Tran, it meant a functioning organ.

Two months later, Le knows nothing more about her daughter's fatal jump. But her face brightens when she says, "She's an organ donor."

Tran soon will return to work without tiresome doctors' appointments in between.

Translating for Tran, stepdaughter Jessica Than said, "She thanks the Le family for saving her life."

Antonia Le, a bright and beautiful Palm Beach Gardens High School freshman, had it bad for a football player named Bobby Rusley. But the couple argued, and Bobby mentioned breaking up.

On Jan. 19, around 11:30 p.m., the two squabbled as Bobby drove his father's car toward his grandmother's home in Riviera Beach. Antonia said, "All or nothing," Bobby later told police -and then jumped from the moving car.

As doctors monitored Antonia's brain, family friends visited her hospital room, offering comfort to her parents and three younger sisters.

One was Canh Phuong Tran, a woman with whom Lori Le once worked at Perfect 10 Nail Salon in Jupiter. The two women spoke of how Tran's 19-year-old stepdaughter was close in age to Antonia.

The girl showed no improvement. Doctors tried an induced coma, but nothing stopped the brain swelling. Antonia never woke up.

As the Les considered donating her organs, someone from Tran's family mentioned her failing right kidney.

They soon learned Antonia was a match for Tran, and they asked that she receive the kidney.

"It was a lot of emotions," Tran said through her stepdaughter's translation. "I didn't know how to feel."

Then, shyly speaking English, Tran added herself: "Good friend."

Just days after Antonia's death in January, Lori Le cheered when speaking of Tran. "I'm so happy for her," she said.

Priorities are clear in each woman's home: Family photos line the walls.

Tran came to United States in 2000 after working for 15 years as a nurse in Vietnam. Her husband's family met her there and set the pair up with phone calls and an eventual meeting. They now live in West Palm Beach and have a 6-year-old son.

Le said she and her husband landed in Palm Beach Gardens because of the emerging biotechnology industry and Antonia's interest in a medical career.

An urn with Antonia's name sits on a display table in her family's living room, between her most recent school photo and a digital picture frame with a running slide show of childhood moments.

When Tran stops by Le's home, the two women hug and chatter away. Their husbands prod under the hoods of their cars. The families never dwell much on the source of their new bond.

"They just go over and talk," Tran's stepdaughter explained. "They don't really want to bring it up anymore."

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