Sunday, May 18, 2008 | 4:41 PM
Teen's death sparks organ donation driveWILMINGTON, N.C. -- When Colorado teenager Emily Keyes got her first driver's license in 2006, she was asked, like most first-time drivers, if she wanted to become an organ donor. She said yes.
Months later in a horrific shooting that captured national attention, the 16-year-old died after a man took Emily and other female students hostage in their Colorado high school.
People across the country read or watched news reports about the shocking incident, including Wilmington resident Julius Britto.
The Star-News of Wilmington reports that the retired New York City police officer with failing eyesight had no idea at the time that soon he would be forever tied to the Keyes family and Emily's decision at the DMV.
Britto suffered from a hereditary condition that caused swelling of the cornea, the outer lining of his eyes.
He stopped driving. He had trouble baiting his hooks while fishing. He was slowly becoming legally blind.
"It was like looking through a fish tank that needed to be cleaned," Britto said.
Soon after he received partial cornea transplants, Emily's parents contacted him and told him Emily was the donor for his right cornea.
"Ellen and John Michael Keyes, we talked over the phone, and they sent a picture of Emily," said Britto, who eventually visited them in Colorado. "She said, 'You live through my daughter's eyes, and you're part of our family'."
Influenced by the experience, Britto has become an avid supporter of raising awareness about organ donation.
"It was a beautiful thing," he said. "Her giving was a blessing to me, and I in turn wanted to give back."
More than 2,000 transplant surgeries have been done this year, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, the national group responsible for matching organ donors and recipients.
Last year, about 8,100 deceased donors and 6,300 living donors helped patients across the country.
Still, nearly 99,000 candidates are on the organ donor waiting list. Three thousand of them are in North Carolina.
In recognition of April as National Donate Life month, state groups recently launched an online registry. North Carolina also has a new law in place since October that gives stronger legal standing to a person's decision to sign up as an organ donor.
Donate Life North Carolina, an umbrella for the state's three organ procurement groups, runs the online registry --
www.donatelifenc.org/becomeadonor .
The Web-based registry is intended to make it significantly easier for people to become organ donors.
"Prior to that, someone had to wait until their driver's license was up for renewal, which can sometimes only happen every five to eight years," said Dawn Hall, spokeswoman for Carolina Donor Services, the organ procurement group that covers the eastern part of the state.
Tammy Minor, a recent kidney donor from St. Augustine, Fla., said more widespread awareness about the organ donor program is needed.
"The only time you're ever asked to be on the registry is when you get a license. Then you're never really asked again," she said. "I never really thought about it until this came up with Bob."
Bob is Bob Gruber, publisher of the Star-News, who underwent a transplant in February.
Gruber had been diagnosed with a disease that affects the tiny units in the kidney that help filter blood, leaving him fatigued, sick and ultimately on dialysis for more than a year.
While Gruber sat on a lengthy wait list, his family members checked to see if they were matches, but they weren't.
His former best friend from high school in Ohio, Randy Minor, offered to be tested. But he didn't match either.
Despite hearing numerous stories about her husband and Gruber's youth over the years, Tammy had never met Gruber until a weekend visit between the two families.
"(Tammy), who I knew all of two days, she stepped forward and said, 'Let me check,' and she became my donor," Gruber said. "It's kind of an extraordinary story because she didn't know me."
Gruber has had some visits back to the hospital since the transplant, mostly because his immune system is weakened by the medication he takes to help his body not reject the new kidney.
But overall, Gruber said his health has improved significantly since the operation.
Among living people who donated organs nationally last year, the most common type came from patients' biological relatives. Those made up nearly 3,800 of the 6,300 living donors, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.
About 1,500 people like Tammy donated organs to people they were not related to last year.
Gruber said he talked at length with Tammy to make sure she knew what she was volunteering to do.
For Tammy, it was an easy decision.
"I was like, this is something that needs to be done, and I couldn't imagine not doing it with Bob's health declining pretty quickly," she said. "I just couldn't imagine me having something that could help him and not doing it. It really wasn't an option."
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvg/story?section=news/local&id=6150295PHOTO: Keyes, 16, was killed by a gunman during a standoff at Platte Canyon High School in 2006.
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