Jul 19, 2006 9:30 pm US/Pacific
Racing to Save Lives
Jefferson Award Winner: Dr. Jeff Shapiro
by Barbara Rodgers
(CBS 5)
Tens of thousands of people have been able to live longer, healthier lives through organ transplants of all kinds. But it's estimated that half of the potentially life-saving organs are never donated. That's why this week's Bay Area Jefferson Award winner is racing to change that.
Dr. Jeff Shapiro is racing against time. At just two-and-a-half, Katalina Thang has already exceeded her life expectancy. She was born with a defective heart. Doctors told her parents more than a year ago she had only about six months left to live.
"They told us there wasn't anything else they could do for her surgically," says Katalina's mother, Mary Thang. "The last resort was a heart and double lung transplant."
For a year and a half now, little Katalina has been waiting. Anesthesiologist Jeff Shapiro has been running, and getting thousands of others to run, too.
"Each runner runs about five miles at a time and then hands a baton to the next runner on a team," he explains. "We just the transfer of the baton from runner to runner to symbolize the transfer of an organ."
The race is called simply "The Relay." Dr. Shapiro created it and makes it happen each year through the "Organs 'R' Us" non-profit he co-founded in 1995.
"The mission of Organs 'R' Us is to create awareness about the need for organ donors. Just in the United States, 18 people who are on transplant waiting lists die every single day and it's tragic," says Dr. Shapiro.
The Relay, a grueling 200-mile, 24-hour long race from Calistoga to Santa Cruz, highlights all those people who are waiting for organs. The race was dedicated to Katalina in 2006. But it's not the only race Dr. Shapiro uses to draw attention to his cause. For ten years now, he's organized some of his young transplant recipients into an eye-catching costume for the world's largest foot race, the San Francisco Bay to Breakers.
His system is working, gathering he says, "Twenty-five million dollars in publicity for organ donations supporting ninety thousand Americans ready for transplants."
The publicity Organs 'R' Us generates leads families who never thought of organ donation to become donors, like the woman who ran The Relay one year, then later lost her 8-year-old niece.
"She said she convinced her sister to donate her niece's organs to other children based on what she had learned about organ donation," says Dr. Shapiro.
Now the Thangs are hoping for a similar miracle, even though they realize another parent would be losing a child.
"Just keep in mind there's little babies like Katalina who still have a chance if given that opportunity," says Mary.
Dr. Shapiro is hopeful: "We've had a number of children that The Relay has been dedicated to and every single one of them thus far has received their organ or organs... It makes us work harder to try to save the rest of the people."
For his dedication to raising awareness about the need for life-saving organ donations, this week's Jefferson Award in the Bay Area goes to Dr. Jeff Shapiro of San Carlos.
(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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