Ambassadors of Life Refiring, Not Retiring

April 2022 By Kim Gilmore, LifeQuest Public Education Coordinator Selfless love begins and ends with sacrifice. Those of us who work with organ donor families have a front-row seat to the most extraordinary acts of generosity: parents who are so inspired by their only son’s choice to donate his organs that they are willing to […]

Organ Donation is Personal to Miss Florida Contestant

January 2022: When she is asked how to pronounce her name, Casana Fink’s reply is a little fruity. “It’s Casana, rhymes with banana,” she quips. Ask the 23-year-old University of Florida graduate about her passion for promoting organ, eye and tissue donation as the reigning Miss Gainesville 2022, and she gets real, fast. “Parents just […]

Not All Superheroes Wear Capes

January 2022: “Zach was the one that if you were on the side of the road, and you looked like you needed help, he would stop,” said his mother, Michelle Trevellick, R.N., a case manager for the Healthy Start Nurse-Family Partnership at UF Health Jacksonville. Zach Rabon was the type of man who walked into a room […]

Donate Life Rose Parade Honoree

November 2021: More than 10 years after the unexpected death of 16-year-old William Rollings McMahon of Pensacola, his mother is getting ready to celebrate the impact and shared legacy of his life in an extraordinary way. Kim McMahon, William’s mother and a tissue recipient, will represent the American Association of Tissue Banks (AATB) as a rider […]

Student Organ Donor Advocates (SODA)

August 2021: August is National Multiethnic Donor Awareness Month! On Thursday, August 19 at 7 p.m. ET, LifeQuest and Transplant Talk with Naishanda will host a podcast featuring a panel of multiethnic college students who are members of Student Organ Donor Advocates. SODA is a national organization that forms student leadership teams to promote organ […]

NFL Wife Continues Husband’s Legacy

August 2021: After Jacksonville native and former Buffalo Bills player Leonard Wayne Larramore died while waiting for a heart and kidney transplant, his wife Naishanda decided it was time to speak directly to communities of color. “I truly believe my husband would be alive if more people were organ donors,” Naishanda said. “Now his name […]

A Purr-fectly Heartfelt Surprise

July 2021: Danny Martin was intentional about the gifts he gave Debbie Shriner the first time they met near her home in Nassau County, Fla. In one hand, he held two dozen roses that symbolized the gratitude he felt toward Debbie and her son, Branden, an organ donor from whom Danny received a kidney and […]