Teenager with goal and mom on his mind

On a  recent Saturday in shopping center in Oakley, California,  a  young man pursued a dream – to honor his mother.

Jonathan Davis, 17, and CTDN Volunteers set up a table at a shopping center in Oakley, CA to register people to be organ donors.  His goal is to complete a project to become an Eagle Scout.

His cause – to save lives – is in honor of his mother.  She died in November, 2010, living 15 years longer thanks to a double lung and heart transplant.

“As long I as I get one person to sign up, I will be happy,” the young man said before the event. “ Someone who signs up is going to help save someone’s life.”

After a full day of overseeing the effort, the 17-year-old Freedom High Scholl student and the volunteers registered 23 people who agreed to one day donate organs and tissues to help those in need of organ and tissue transplants.

The project is part of Davis’ dream of being an Eagle Scout.  The rank is the highest in scouting and requires doing tasks which earn merit badges, about 36 in all.  It also requires doing a community project.

So Davis has been organizing his friends and high school classmates to go distribute flyers about the Saturday event, canvassing neighborhoods in the community.  And on January 28th ,  California Transplant Donor Network volunteers handed out literature and registered people to become donors.

Davis finds the idea of helping people understand the need for more people to organ and tissue donors the perfect way to purse that goal.

Paula Davis found out she had an enlarged heart at 17.  Jonathan says doctors told her to expect to live three more.   She lived 12 years without a transplant,  until in 1995 she received a heart transplant, and then a year later, a double lung transplant.

Outliving that doctor’s prediction meant that at some point, Paula, who eventually married Derle, could adopt a  baby, Jonathan, and raise him.

“She was an incredible woman,” says Jonathan of his mother, who died five days before she turned 50 years old.

Davis will be graduating Freedom High School later this year, and going on to community college with dreams of becoming a firefighter and paramedic.   What’s attractive about those careers?  Like what he is doing Saturday, “it saves lives.”

Oakley is a community of about 35,000 people in Contra Costa County.