When Rick Newlin was 48 and miserably sick from a liver duct that had closed down, doctors told him he was dying. He would not get a liver transplant, he remembers them saying as he was handed reading material about death.
The hardest part, he says now, was telling his dad, who had lung disease and wasn't well, either.
They were on their way out the door at LDS Hospital, devastated, when someone grabbed his arm. The Olympics were just around the corner and he was used to seeing security guards, but he couldn't figure out why one would be bothering them as they were leaving. And his confusion was compounded when they were rushed to an elevator and upstairs.
Not 10 minutes after he received a death sentence, he was being prepped for a liver transplant — nothing short of a miracle, he says today.
Rori Winterbottom was having her own miracle at about that time. Her kidneys no longer functioned and she was living life around her dialysis schedule, never feeling good but hanging on. Then she got the call to get to the hospital; a donor kidney had been found. Within a day, she would wake up feeling immensely better than she had in years, all diet restrictions and lifestyle limitations gone.
The wellspring of their miracles was a 15-year-old girl named Kavie Ryan Thorpe from Moroni, Sanpete County. She and two close friends were probably laughing and talking about boys, her mother figures, when a drunken driver slammed into their car. One friend, who was driving, died immediately. Kavie (rhymes with savvy) held on for six days, never regaining consciousness. She was declared brain dead Feb. 4, 2002. The third girl survived the wreck.
Photos of Kavie span her life from infancy through ninth grade, when the pictures stop. They all show huge eyes and long, wavy brown hair. She's smiling in every shot, which mom Devie Thorpe has lovingly assembled on poster boards and in large scrapbooks.
Just a month before the wreck, the family had watched the movie "Return to Me." Kavie told her mom, dad Kris and little sister Kobri, now 15, that she'd want to be an organ donor.
She got her wish — and her family got the ripple effect, which spread across the Western states. Newlin lives in Idaho with the teen's liver. Bridgette Montano, then 16, of New Mexico received her right cornea. Her right lung went to Paula Feiner in Colorado, while her left kidney went to Bob Richardson in Nevada. Mikki Rienke of Arizona received her pancreas. Winterbottom lives in West Point, Davis County.
Because of damage from the accident, Kavie's left lung and heart couldn't be donated, but her heart valves were.
The recipients are all pictured on the poster board, too. Every one of them responded to letters from Devie Thorpe a year after Kavie died, passed on through Intermountain Donor Services, which coordinates organ donation in the region. Kavie's mom wanted to get to know the people who received such vital parts of her daughter. They've all penned letters that are part of a book that Thorpe is writing about the heart-breaking, life-affirming journey their family has been making in the four years since Kavie died. Montano, who received a cornea, wrote about being "scared, sad and happy at the same time" as she learned she would be able to see again. "I cried because someone had to die" for it to happen.
It's the same mixture of sadness and joy they all share, says Newlin. He'd explored options, since he had several family members more than happy to donate an organ to save his life. But his condition, caused by the shut-down of the duct that drains the liver, involved a part that everyone needs to survive. Only someone who died could save him.
Winterbottom was there when Devie Thorpe met Newlin for the first time on Tuesday at LDS Hospital. The two women have become very important to each other. Since her transplant, Winterbottom has recovered and she and her husband, James, have adopted a baby, Jimmy, now 3. She still cries when she looks at pictures of the teen who saved her life.
She refers to Richardson as her kidney twin, because they each received one from Kavie. When they were hospitalized just after the surgeries, one of them was always heading to the other's room to chat.
Rienke made a quilt for the Thorpes as a thanks for her donated pancreas. In various combinations, donor family and recipients keep in touch on birthdays, holidays, Christmas.
Theirs is a family that is not afraid to talk about death, says Devie Thorpe. Her first husband died of cancer when Kavie was small. She's lost four children now, including Kavie, one to sudden infant death syndrome and twins who miscarried.
And life doesn't scare them, either. They've embraced the recipients as a way to celebrate Kavie. "Every time I hear from one of the recipients or see them, I get to hold a part of her," Devie Thorpe says. "She's not dead."
E-mail: lois@desnews.com