After Son’s Death at 25, Parents Were Shocked at How Many People He Helped with Organ Donation: 102 and Counting (Exclusive)

On March 17, 2023, Kim Wormsbaker’s coworker returned to their agency successful Twin Falls, Idaho, pinch a look of daze connected her face. She’d conscionable walked by a horrific motorcycle accident. 

“I'm not judge he is going to make it,” nan female told Wormsbaker, 63.

All excessively soon, Wormsbaker’s world shattered erstwhile her husband, Curtis, 59, called and she learned nan unfortunate was their 25-year-old son, Dylan.

The journeyman plumber and begetter of 4 had been riding his motorcycle done municipality erstwhile he was deed by a minivan that grounded to yield.

“My endurance instincts kicked in, and I was conscionable numb,” Kim tells PEOPLE successful this week's rumor of receiving that devastating call.

It wouldn't beryllium until astir an hr later, during nan agelong thrust to Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center (EIRMC), that nan mates learned nan afloat grade of their son's injuries.

“They informed america that my boy was fighting for his life,” remembers Curtis, who had pulled complete onto nan broadside of nan road. “They needed to trim his skull unfastened to merchandise nan unit if we wanted a chance to prevention him.”

The panicked begetter called authorities constabulary to petition an escort, but that wasn’t possible.

Instead, nan mates rushed connected their ain to nan aesculapian center. Their boy died a week later of a traumatic encephalon injury. (The driver of nan van, Afton Gailfus, was convicted of vehicular manslaughter.)

The young businessman near down a grieving family: his parents, 4 siblings and fiancée, Angela Pace. The 2 shared 4 kids successful a blended family — his son, 4-year-old Sawyer, her 9-year-old girl Emalyn and 5-year-old boy Alaric arsenic good arsenic their boy together, 3-year-old Denver — and had large dreams for nan future.

As heartbreak washed complete them, location was 1 affirmative spot of news that kept Dylan’s parents anchored: they learned their son, a registered organ donor, could thief others.

When he was astir 20, Dylan signed nan designated spot connected his licence and told his dada he’d made nan determination successful lawsuit thing “bad happened” to him. Five years later, Dylan has been capable to thief an astonishing 102 patients astir nan country, from kids to retirees, who ranged successful property from 15 to 77.

“It was enlightening and impactful and important that we gave him that grant to beryllium that hero,” says Kim. She and Curtis were guided done nan process pinch nan thief of representatives from nan statement Donor Connect.

There is simply a hopeless request for specified gifts.

More than 100,000 group successful nan U.S. are presently waiting for transplants — and 1 personification tin prevention up to 8 lives done coagulated organ donation. Dr. Danielle Brandman astatine New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center has made a profession of specified surgeries. 

“It's really a gift to beryllium capable to spot my patients return to nan group that they had been earlier they had been truthful sick,” says Brandman, nan hospital's aesculapian head of liver transplantation. “We really are changing lives each azygous day.”

The Wormsbakers learned conscionable really overmuch of an effect their boy had erstwhile they received a statement from a man who received 1 of Dylan’s kidneys. “We're conscionable amazed astatine really galore lives he changed,” says Curtis.

The mates — who are raising Dylan’s boy Sawyer, while Pace raises her 2 kids arsenic good arsenic their boy together — are wished to support their son’s representation live for his children.

Pace, who declined to beryllium interviewed, has opened an indoor kids’ playground, Little World Play, successful Twin Falls, which she first started readying pinch Dylan.

“For nan past year, we person been moving connected opening a nosy spot wherever our children and our friends’ children could play and observe typical events,” Pace wrote connected nan website. “With a fewer evident setbacks, I’m truthful tense yet excited to bring nan organization Little World Play.”

Kim is afloat of admiration for Pace. 

“They really knew really to activity together,” she says of nan couple’s relationship.

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The Wormsbakers make a constituent to bring each 4 children together, sometimes visiting Dylan’s grave.

"They each cognize their dada is successful heaven," Curtis says, "and he's watching them."