A local couple advocates for organ donation after the positive impact it had on their family with their daughter’s loss. 

“There used to be a billboard over Mrs. Barrett’s thrift store back then, that had a billboard about organ donation and on our way to Monterey that morning she said, ‘Mom I would do that. I would do that.’,” Terri Contreras said remembering her daughter Celeste.

Celeste Contreras passed away when she was 15 years old. Her parents wish to keep the details of her death private.

“She passed about three months after her quinceanera,” Terri said. “It devastated the whole family.”

“At times I felt selfish,” Celeste’s Father Juan Contreras said. “I’ll never see her graduate. I’ll never see her go to college. I won’t have grand-babies and then I said, ‘Why are you thinking that way?’ Don’t be that way, don’t be selfish.”

While Juan and Terri faced the decision to keep or take their daughter off of life support, Life Gift approached them with the question on if Celeste is an organ donor.

“We were not receptive because at that point, we were still holding on to the thought that she would come through this,” Terri said.
 
But they said they knew Celeste would have wanted to donate and help others.
 
“It was just having to deal with it because we knew that would be what she wanted,” Juan said.
 
“It really wasn’t anything we discussed, other than me remembering that conversation with her that she saw that billboard,” Terri said.
 
Celeste donated five major organs that day to recipients in all areas of the country.
 
“She was able to give her heart to a man in San Antonio,” Terri said. “Her kidney went to a gentleman here in Lubbock. One in Hartford the other kidney. Her pancreas went to a doctor in Chicago and a liver to a young girl about her age in the Dallas area.”
 
After 10 years, the Contreras felt comfortable accepting an invitation to meet up with the family of the liver recipient from Dallas, Laura.
 
“I never will forget, we did not want to say goodbye because we just kept talking and conversations would blossom, it was hard to say goodbye,” Terri said. “Doreen said go ahead, touch it. And I went excuse me? She told Laura lift your shirt up and she said touch it. She said your daughter is right there.”
 
In a moment of closure for these families, the Contreras were facing another life-threatening challenge. Juan had been suffering from liver cancer that progressed to cancer.
 
“It devastated us after being optimistic and thinking we’re going to be ok, we can do this, to find out that the tumor has gotten bigger and there were more,” Terri said.
 
This progression turned into a blessing in disguise, as the sovereignty of his illness put him higher on the transplant list.
 
They soon got a call one random night at dinner that he will be receiving a new liver. 
 
Terri and Juan flew into a Dallas hospital within an hour that night. By 4:30 a.m. the next morning, Juan was in surgery.
 
“The doctor came up and told us it was a very difficult surgery,” Terri said. “Very, very difficult surgery and pretty much had lost him on the table twice.”
 
After nine nervous days post surgery, Laura surprises them in the hospital as their extended family since Celeste couldn’t be there.
 
This relationship between the two families continued to Juan even walking Laura down the isle at her wedding.
 
“It’s been a blessing through the tragedy,” Terri said. “Because we’ve come to know this family on a level that not too many people even blood  family probably can’t even image the emotion and bond that we have as two families.”