A gift of hope
By YADIRA SANCHEZ OLSON
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In 15-year-old Oscar Rodriguez’ dreams, people would chant his name.
“Oscar! Oscar!” his fans would yell as he stepped onto a green field to play.
“He wanted to be a famous soccer player,” said Rodriguez’ mom, Martina Sanchez, of Aurora.
A fan of the famous Mexican team, Cruz Azul, Rodriguez couldn’t get enough of the sport.
“He played for his school, he played in a team out of school and he played it with his friends,” Sanchez said.
But in 2007, tragedy struck the family and Rodriguez’ dreams were cut short when he was fatally shot four times while walking his girlfriend home.
At the hospital, at a time of unimaginable grief for his parents and his five siblings, the family was asked to make a decision – would they consent to donating Oscar’s organs in order to potentially save a life?
“We discussed it and we made the decision together as a family,” said Oscar’s older brother, Jose Rodriguez.
The decision – go ahead and donate.
“It is the best gift of love that anyone can give a fellow human being,” said Raiza Mendoza, Latino affairs coordinator at Gift of Hope.
Gift of Hope Organ & Tissue Donor Network is a federally designated not-for-profit agency that coordinates organ and tissue donation and supports families of donors in the northern three-quarters of Illinois and northwest Indiana.
And with statistics that show just 26 percent of the African-American and Hispanic population in the United States make donations, while 51 percent of those same groups are in need of a donation, Gift of Hope was thankful for the family’s decision.
“We are in most need and we donate the least,” Mendoza said. “That is why awareness and education for us is so important.”
Although Oscar’s family had never thought about the possibility of having to make that choice, they were aware of what a donation could mean for another family.
And now they know what it means for them.
“For a mother, losing her child is very painful, but we did a good thing,” Sanchez said. “I know that my son would have wanted us to do it.”
And although for Sanchez, losing her child has forever changed her life, she does take comfort in the idea that her son lives on through others.
“By Oscar’s family’s generous deed, five lives were saved!” Mendoza said.
Because of the policy of confidentiality, not until the Rodriguez family and the family of the recipients have expressed that they would like to know one another can Gift of Hope divulge any information of identity or any of the medical details to anyone.
But the Rodriguez family already has received a letter from another mom who would like to thank them for saving her daughter’s life.
“I feel happy and at peace that other people didn’t have to lose a loved one,” Sanchez said. “But the emptiness and the pain that is left when your child dies will never get filled.”
Mendoza, who is in constant contact with the Rodriguez family, has had conversations with Sanchez and tells her that making the decision to donate will never fill the emptiness or stop the pain.
“It is absolutely normal and expected for that pain to linger. She shouldn’t feel as if it should be gone because she made the decision to donate,” Mendoza said. “But the joy of helping others when nothing else can be done for your loved one, does help to make some sense of the loss.”
Through a Gift of Hope initiative that aims to spread awareness of the need for Hispanics to donate, Chicago Fire midfielder Marco Pappa has become a spokesman for the cause.
He is featured in a commercial that airs in Spanish and is being shown during the the 2010 FIFA World Cup in Univision.
“I’m hoping that with this, people’s hearts will be touched and they help,” Pappa said.
For Oscar’s mom, the idea that her son never got a chance to realize his dreams is still one she can’t grasp.
But knowing that her son is now the hero of countless of people makes her smile.
“He’d come home and tell me how many goals he scored in his games and I’d laugh and say ‘That’s my boy, that’s my Palencia’ (famous soccer player that trained with Cruz Azul),” Sanchez said. “It’s wonderful he was able to do so much.”
What you should know
According to Gift of Hope, more than 17,000 Latinos are on a waiting list for an organ transplant with the kidneys being the most needed organ.
This is due to three key factors that affect Latinos more than other races: diabetes, obesity and hypertension.
For more information on organ and tissue donations, visit the Gift of Hope Web site at wwwgiftofhope.org or call 630-758-2600.
