Many Northern California residents are different today thanks to organ donations, but not necessarily in ways they expected. Here are the stories of three families: one family who donated organs, one family who experienced loss, and one family who will never forget the gifts.

The gift of Tara Jean

The unexpected death of Deacon Clark Goecker’s eight-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Tara Jean, in 1991 “is what drew me to God,” he says. “It greatly enhanced my faith.”

When Tara Jean died within 24 hours of first becoming ill, “it caused me to rethink what is important in my life,” he said in a recent interview.

He ties his vocation to the permanent diaconate directly to the loss of his daughter and donating her organs to others waiting for transplants.

Someone with the hospital staff casually asked if he and his wife were planning to donate any of Tara Jean’s organs.

“If it hadn’t been for someone in the hospital mentioning (donating Tara’s organs and tissue) to us, we probably would have thought about it too late,” Deacon Goecker said. He credits that individual with giving his family a gift.

“(Organ donation) gave meaning and purpose to this very unexpected death,” he said. “It was the hopeful part of a very traumatic experience. Tara’s death provided the opportunity for us to be a much closer faith community than maybe we would have been.”

It began at 10 p.m. when Deacon Goecker’s wife Janet rushed to the hospital with Tara Jean, or TJ as her brother Seth (then 13) and Erin (then 10) called her. After vomiting, TJ had passed out.

Deacon Goecker was working for the League of California Cities and was away on business. He rushed back. By 7 a.m., the parents knew that despite surgery, their daughter was not going to survive a brain aneurism.

“The only difference between our family and the family down the street is faith. It is the bridge that gets us through these traumatic experiences,” Deacon Goecker said.

Tara Jean’s heart could not be recovered, but her kidneys, liver, eyes, and skin could be. “When someone asked if we had ever given any thought to organ donation we immediately knew — it was clear to Janet and I — that this is what TJ would want. She was that kind of kid: always helping someone,” Deacon Goecker recalled.

A priest gave Tara Jean last rites. Her parents completed the paperwork to allow organ donation. “It didn’t make the experience harder at all,” Deacon Goecker said.

As longtime members of St. James Parish in Davis, Deacon Goecker said his family was “overwhelmed by the support we got from the community.”

Still, he kept questioning why Tara Jean died. Three years of counseling helped him, as did attending noon Mass at the Cathedral in downtown Sacramento near his office. It was there he discerned a vocation to be a permanent deacon.

“I had a conversion experience,” he explained. “The good Lord never gives up on us.” He cut back on work hours during formation and then took early retirement after his ordination in 2000.

“Having experienced (Tara’s death), I am a better minister,” he said. “I am better able to be responsive to others, particularly in hospital situations.”

Now in his third year of full-time ministry at the Newman Center at UC Davis, Deacon Goecker ordered for the Newman Center a set of resources materials for Donor Sabbath, the national awareness campaign about organ transplantation Nov. 11–13.

He hopes that all hospital personnel address the topic with families such as his.

The ability to have Tara Jean’s organs give others life “made the whole experience much more understandable. It made us feel a lot better,” he said. While the Goeckers got a letter from someone who received one of Tara Jean’s organs, Deacon Goecker says he is not preoccupied with who benefited from his daughter’s organs.

His homilies encourage those who have experienced loss. “If I look at this tragedy in a hopeful way, I can see that good comes from it. It provides people of faith with a way to express that faith in ways people can’t even imagine,” he said.

“I can understand why people get bitter,” he added. “You don’t ever forget, but you have to move past it. The way to do that is to have faith, and to be part of a faith community. That allows you to see the hope.”

The loss of Sumiko

Emil “Fred” Fredette deals with his wife’s death by volunteering regularly with one of the four organ procurement organizations in California. His wife Sumiko died nine years ago because she didn’t receive the donation of a liver in time to save her life.

“I didn’t ask God why. He does his own thing. I just looked for comfort,” Fredette said in an inteview. “I found that sitting in the chapel, and being able to talk to him.”

Sumiko and Emil met while he was stationed in Japan between the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

“She was very caring,” Fredette said. Doctors don’t know when she contracted Hepatitis C, which caused cirrhosis of the liver. Fredette retired after 18 years in the state of California’s data processing center when Sumiko became ill. Just 18 months later she was dead.

“It was frustrating, because in a sense I couldn‘t do anything,” he said. “They weren’t doing living adult to adult transplantation. All I could do was hope there was a family out there with the compassion to say ‘yes.’”

Cirrhosis is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States.

“I felt cheated because nobody asked me (to consider having Sumiko’s tissues transplanted). She would have liked that because she liked helping people,” Fredette said.

Fredette is a crusader now. His license plate reads, “B A DONOR.” His friends now know about organ donation and they support him and his volunteer work.

“We lose so many organs because people do not know what their family members wanted, and so they don’t do anything,” he said. “It is a terrible waste. Today is the day to talk about this issue with your family and friends.”

If not, “you may be in this position, too.”

Fredette devotes about five hours each month to addressing groups and working at health fairs to spread the message.

“My goal is that people will put their name on the state registry so that some family won’t have to grieve like I did,” he noted.

He also visits shut-ins in nursing homes, including a veteran of Iwo Jima.

“Despite the loss of Sue, I have a full life,” Fredette said. His faith grew tremendously and he finds great comfort in the Mass and in the sacrament of penance. He became a member of St. Joseph Parish in Elk Grove about eight years ago.

Sumiko was a devout Catholic, but “Sunday was my golf day. Saturday was always Sue’s special day. She died on a Saturday. I always say on June 26, 1996, God got another angel.”

Fredette volunteers to give back to the community, but also because people like Gene have become friends.

Gene had a hard time putting his name on a heart transplant waiting list, thinking that someone else would have to die for him to stay alive. At last he realized that heart donors don’t choose death; it inevitably occurs and families approve transplantation only after the best medical care is given to the dying patient.

After writing the organ procurement agency, which forwarded his letter to the donor’s family, Gene, a 66-year-old man, learned that he had received a 15-year-old’s heart. When Gene met the boy’s mother, she put her hand on Gene’s heart to feel her son’s heart beating. Now friends, she introduces Gene as “my youngest and oldest son.”

Fredette said, “They call it a gift of life; I really think it is a gift of love.”

The children he meets especially affect Fredette.

“My little girlfriend Lacey wears a chain on her neck so every day she is reminded of the gift she received from her organ donor,” he said. “You wouldn’t expect that from a 16-year-old girl.”

Due to the medication received since her heart transplant at 18 months, Lacey now needs a kidney, and her teenage brother will soon undergo surgery to give her one of his.

“These friends of mine celebrate the day of their transplant like a birthday. They know that somewhere, a family grieves that same day,” Fredette said.

Fredette’s faith is exhibited in the times he sits quietly in the chapel, praying for recipients and donors. “If you have faith, you can get through anything.”

How precious life is

Colors are a little brighter now, say Tom and Sheila Inks. Tom’s heart transplant two years ago altered their lives.

“There’s a part of this that was like going through hell, and a part of this that left us knowing we were blessed,” Sheila Inks said. Among the blessings are people they met and “strength we never knew we had.”

“My faith and belief in God and the goodness of people are so much stronger,” Tom Inks said. “We enjoy life a lot more now. I take one day at a time. I don’t take things so seriously.”

Tom has new priorities. His identity no longer depends on work.

“I go through life and suddenly stop. I think what is inside my body,” he explained. “The heart controls your body. Knowing that someone else is gone and I am here — well it stops you in your tracks.”

Tom Inks, 65, works in construction project management and exercises regularly. He didn’t suspect he had heart trouble until 1998, when shortness of breath led to a physical. His heart was enlarged. Medication helped for three years, but then in 2001 Tom nearly lost consciousness at the gym. Tom received a pacemaker-defibrillator.

In January 2003 his heart was barely working at 10 percent. Only a heart transplant could save him. Tom and Sheila couldn’t believe it.

“I was pretty much in shock,” Sheila said. “You hear ‘end stage heart disease,’ but it doesn’t compute.”

Tom was put on the heart transplant waiting list. Priority depends upon the disease’s severity and the chances of recovery.

The next few months were a parade of doctor appointments, hospitalizations, medication adjustments, an external pump to keep him alive, and fear.

Then on Sept. 23, 2003 at 9 p.m., the call came: “Do you still want that heart?”

As Tom was wheeled into the operating room, he told Sheila, “I’ll see you on the other side,” meaning after surgery.

“I lost it,” Sheila said. Until that moment, she thought things like this happen to someone else.

Tom spent five weeks at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center.

“One day when he was in ICU I said the rosary 50 times,” Sheila said. “We witnessed a lot of horrible things,” including the death of a fellow transplant patient.

Tom’s severe reaction to anti-rejection drugs included seizures and going blind for a week. He had to relearn to eat, drink and walk. Finally discharged, he spent one day in their Land Park home in Sacramento before returning to the hospital because of an infection.

Tom is now grateful for every day: “You don’t know how fortunate you are until (the surgery and recovery process) is over.”

Prayers from family and community sustained them. The Inks are members of Holy Spirit Parish.

“I was totally blown away at the response and the help and the good wishes from people,” Tom said. “Sometimes it takes that kind of trial to see how wonderful people can be.”

Tom now volunteers at health fairs, and talks about his experience to encourage people to sign up as organ donors.

“I am fortunate to be here,” he said. “I volunteer to give back. It is a wonderful gift and I am glad to be able to share that.”

The Inks pray for the anonymous donor’s family. Tom’s letters remain unanswered, and he understands that a family grieves the same day he celebrates the gift of being alive.

“One void is not knowing anything about this person,” he said. “The emotions that go along with this. We don’t know what caused this person to pass away.”

“You awaken to the fact that life is not about stuff. It is really about people, relationships, family, friends, and sharing with someone else even when you don’t have the energy to do it,” Sheila said. “It’s a gift of life for him, but it is a gift of awareness for me, of how lovely and precious life is. Cherish life. It is beautiful.”

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