- [Narrator] Funding for this edition of One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

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- This is One-On-One.

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(upbeat music) - Hey, everyone.

Steve Adubato.

Welcome to a very special half hour.

I'm joined by Jacqui Tricarico.

You know Jacqui from all of her work on "One-on-One."

She is our senior correspondent.

Jacqui, this half hour is really special.

Because, on June 7th, you went and covered the New Jersey Sharing Network Annual 5K Celebration of Life event.

People are about to see a whole range of interviews that you did and powerful stories that need to be told.

And who'd you talk to?

- This was all for the New Jersey Sharing Network Celebration of Life, like you said, Steve, celebrating organ and tissue donors, recipients, family, loved ones, and so much more at this incredible event that's been going on for 16 years now.

I got to speak with so many people who shared their stories.

They were so willing to open up and share their stories that, often, are really heartbreaking.

Losing someone.

Losing a family member.

Someone you love.

But them being able to give the gift of life through organ and tissue donation.

Steve, when we're talking about the numbers too, 100,000 Americans right now are currently waiting for a lifesaving organ.

4,000 of those being in New Jersey.

This is a need that is amplified across the United States.

And this organization brings so much awareness to organ and tissue donation, to people needing to sign up.

And, Steve, I just wanted to say, lastly, that signing up is so easy now.

You know, you said do it at the DM- - Do I have to be an organ donor?

- Yeah, it's like you used to go to the DMV to get your license for the first time or renew.

You check that box to say you're an organ donor.

You can still do it that way.

But you can also log on to NJSharingNetwork.org.

And a couple quick, easy steps, you can become an organ donor.

- Powerful, impactful, important.

You need to find out more.

Check out Jacqui's Special.

(upbeat music) - I'm so pleased to be joined now by Emmie Bleznick, who is the wife of organ donor, Adam, and captain of the team Adam's Warrior.

So great to have you with us, Emmie.

- Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

Well, first, please tell us about your husband, Adam, and how he was as a husband and a father.

- Adam was an incredible guy.

He never met a stranger.

He was super outgoing, super friendly.

He just connected people.

And that was like, one of his superpowers.

And I love that about him.

And he loved our son, Noah, endlessly.

He was such a great dad.

He was super fun and sweet.

So we lost Adam very suddenly.

It was cardiac arrest.

And so kind of, in a blink, I became a single mom and a widow.

And, you know, navigating that was really, really challenging.

I know about the Sharing Network because I'm actually a physical therapist at University Hospital.

So I have been working with donor recipients, liver transplant recipients specifically, and donor families in the setting of working in the trauma unit and in the surgical ICU for almost my entire career.

Almost 15 years.

And I knew about this 5K.

Even though I had never participated in it, I always knew it was in early June.

And it just was so automatic, considering how generous in spirit Adam was and what a special way this would be to honor him.

And, also, to have something tangible for our son, Noah, to do every year around the anniversary of his dad's passing and something so positive to help remember his dad.

- So did Adam have that box checked?

- He did.

Absolutely.

- He did.

And you did too - Absolutely.

- Because of these conversations that you had together.

Those are difficult conversations to have.

- Yes.

- We talk about it as dinner table conversation, right?

To making it more real to be able to be a dinner table conversation with your family members.

What's your message to people hesitant to talk about something that can be really painful or uncomfortable?

- It is a really challenging topic.

And it can be hard.

But you just have to think about what a gift that you're giving so many different people.

Adam was mainly a tissue donor.

He wasn't really able to donate organs.

And I think that's something that, sometimes, is underrepresented.

As a physical therapist, I know that impact every single day.

That is an ACL that lets somebody run.

That's a bone graft that lets somebody walk.

Eyes.

Maybe giving somebody the gift of vision.

And so just taking a step back and thinking that, you know, whatever you have in this life, you can't take it with you.

And so making sure that you can give that gift to somebody else in the wake of a tragedy has been so important for me.

- So Sharing Network is a little bit new in your life in terms of working here.

It's been not even two years yet in this role as clinical donation specialist.

Tell us what led you to this career with the New Jersey Sharing Network.

- So I ended up here because I had a daughter who passed away at the age of 21 while she was waiting for a double lung transplant.

Obviously, that was very devastating.

It led me to become a nurse after she passed with the hopes of working in transplant one day.

And I was very fortunate to be able to get here.

- Emily is your daughter's name.

- Yeah.

- I'm so sorry for your loss.

- Thank you.

- Emily sounded like just the most beautiful, wonderful girl.

Tell us about her journey and those days waiting for that double lung transplant.

- Her journey was not easy.

She was diagnosed at one year old.

In and out of the hospital at least- - [Jacqui] What was she diagnosed with?

- Cystic fibrosis, yes.

In and out of the hospital a few times a year.

And when she finally was told she needed a transplant, she was 17 going on 18.

Not ready to accept that.

And so it took us a long time to get her on board.

But she finally decided to go ahead and get listed.

And then we spent five months in and out of the hospital, with the last three months fully in the hospital, hoping for a transplant to come through.

- Fast forward a little bit into your story here.

And you said you became a nurse.

And that led you to being here with the New Jersey Sharing Network.

- Yeah.

- How has seeing transplantation and organ donation, on one side with Emily, and now seeing it from this vantage point, working with the Sharing Network, how has that changed things for you and kind of helped you through your grief journey?

- Oh, working here has been amazing for me.

It's helped me heal tremendously.

Before I worked here, I could barely talk about Emily at all without crying.

So it's been wonderful for me.

But I have seen such a difference in, like I said, going from mom to working on the other side.

And seeing the donor families.

And the grief they're going through.

And being able to help them.

And help other people on the other side also.

- How important is it that, on the hospital end, you are really honoring the donor, and the donor families, and helping them during such a difficult time in their lives?

- It's incredibly rewarding.

And probably one of the most difficult things you can do in our society.

Supporting a donor and supporting a donor family at this critical time in their life to make one of the most complex decisions about saving other lives at the end of someone's life is extremely complicated.

Our system does it very effectively, focusing on the patient, and focusing on, really, the big picture of how to support the patient and their wishes at the end of their life.

You cannot have donation without transplantation.

And you can't have transplantation without donation.

It's a partnership.

So for us as a transplant center and for our transplant teams, it's extremely important to support the donor teams and the donor community so we can save more lives.

- You lost your son, Devin, just this past April.

- Yes.

- Tell us about Devin and who he was.

- Devin is a loving, caring, polite individual.

He enjoy family gathering.

When he's not doing his nine-to-five information technology duties that he excelled at, he's playing video games by himself or with his friends.

He had an infectious smile that would light up a room.

- You are really deep in this grieving process right now.

But what has it done for your family, knowing that he was able to improve and save lives with his organs and tissue?

- That give us hope.

It gave us some sort of comfort, knowing that his legacy will be lived on through others.

And to know, you know, and, again, you know, going back to the way he was, the way he was brought up.

His self-awareness and love for each other.

It just fit in where he could give other families that hope of a second chance in life.

- In 2020, at the height of COVID, the unimaginable happens.

You have a six-week-old baby.

And Jay suffers a fatal brain aneurysm.

First, I'm so sorry that, you know, you never think something like that would happen to your loved one.

Having the six-week-old baby at the same time, I can't imagine what you were going through.

- It was a lot.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

Yeah, but talk about, when you were approached about organ donation, because Jay was a registered donor, right?

- Yeah, so I didn't have to make that decision.

Because he checked the box, which is very important.

Because they listen to what you want personally.

And I was approached, I mean, immediately.

They had said that he was an organ donor and that they were going to donate his organs.

And, you know, it was just like a no-brainer.

Because he was able to.

And you have to kind of die like, a specific way to be able to donate your organs.

It's not just anybody can do it.

So once, you know, he was able to, the Sharing Network put everything into action, and took over, and did all of the things that needed to get done for it.

- Talk about a little bit more about being here at the 5K event, especially with Tommy.

How important is it for you to show him and be here with your family?

You have a big team.

Team Jay Birds, right?

- [Jessica] We do.

We do.

- [Jacqui] Talk about the team a little bit being here and honoring Jay in this way.

- Everybody that shows up is, it's just, it makes my heart so big because I know it's for me, and for Tommy, and for Jay, and to just keep his memory alive.

And it's a day that is for him.

And I get to remember him.

And I get to, you know, be with all of my people, remembering him.

The Sharing Network.

The first year that we did the Sharing Network, it was actually virtual.

We did it two months after Jay passed.

- That must have been really difficult.

- It was.

But because it was virtual, it was just us.

So we were just walking around the streets of Chatham and doing it.

And it kind of got me into it.

Because that was a really hard time.

So to just baby steps into it.

Like, then the next year, when everything finally opened up, and we got to see like, what it was really like, it was just so incredible.

And then every year since then, I've just wanted to get more people, and make our team bigger, and really just, you know, have a good time.

- MTF is one of the largest tissue banks in the world.

We take donated gifts.

Gifts of tissue.

And we transform those into transplants that are used throughout the world.

52 countries.

We distribute to 52 countries.

And those tissues are used in surgery.

Any kinds of surgery.

There's sports medicine surgeries.

There's cancer surgeries for young children with sarcomas.

There's breast reconstruction after mastectomy.

And those are a way to bridge what we're doing here today, which is talking about donation, and making that into transplantation.

- Because, so often, this part of this experience here is, yes, talking about organ donation.

But also tissue donations.

A lot of times, people hear more about organ donation because it is- - Yes, yes, yes.

- Yes, my friend, my neighbor actually is getting a new kidney in a couple weeks.

You know, you hear so much more about that.

But the tissue donation is such a unique and important part of the equation here when we're talking about donation overall.

Two and a half million people.

Is that right?

Every year?

- It's actually more than that.

- More than that now, okay.

- Yes, and so each tissue donor can help over a hundred folks.

So when you're talking about organs, obviously, they're lifesaving.

But we have life saving grafts as well for devastating burns.

Again, I mentioned cancers and amputations.

So it really is a big part of what we do in the donation process.

- Let's first talk about your husband and what he was like as a husband and a father.

And you have five children.

- [Kristal] He was a defender, for sure.

Protector.

He was just full of life everywhere he went.

He was just caring.

- Talk us through during the worst day of your life.

And knowing, okay, he had already made that decision.

So that decision was made.

That must have helped with you being able to move forward with it.

But talk about the process of him becoming an organ and tissue donor.

- So, as I said, I didn't know until they called me.

I was heavily in, you know, in my grief.

But when they called me to tell me that he was donating and what he would be donating, that actually shifted my perspective.

He did donate his knees.

He donated his eyes.

He donated his heart valve.

Quite a few things.

I thought the organ's donation was like, limited to like, the major organs.

Like the heart, the lungs, and things like this.

So when I found out that he donated all these extra organs, his skin in particular, the tissue, it just- - This is such a learning process for you too.

- It was.

And it made my day, to be honest.

It made my day.

And I was like, you know, it's like a gift that keeps on giving.

Like, he is giving other people a second chance.

- And that kind of was in tune to his job too, right?

He worked at MTF Biologics, which we know is a tissue bank.

- Yes.

- So that was really in tune to what he was doing every day at work, right?

- Full circle.

- Full circle.

- It was full circle.

And I didn't know that MTF sponsored this event until I started researching.

And I'm like, hold up.

Like, this is really full circle.

Like, he gave, you know, his service, right, to this organ, I guess this is where he learned about like, organ donation.

But he also served in the Marine Corps.

So he was always like, committed and dedicated to service and giving.

Like, he put his life on the line for others.

And it's no surprise that this is his last gift.

Like, giving his life to others as well.

- I was diagnosed with PKD about 14 years old and was fine.

I lived a healthy life until I was about 35 or so.

And I started having symptoms.

And, I mean, I went from like, living a normal life to, within two months, of just basically going through full renal failure.

- Oh, that's so quick.

- I got on the transplant list.

Received my liver.

And my recovery was well.

I was doing so amazing.

I was so happy.

Ready to return to work.

And then I started having complications with my kidney.

And a year later, in 2024, I received a kidney transplant.

And it was life-saving.

I mean, I got back to work.

I got back to my normal life.

I got back to being a mom again, which was one of the most important things for me.

- Your best friend, Caitlin, she passed away unexpectedly.

But, during that time, you found out that she was going to be donating organs and tissue.

Talk about that moment for you and her family knowing that she was going to be giving the gift of life in such an amazing way during such a difficult, horrible situation.

- Yeah.

So, in 2017, Caitlin unfortunately had a tragic accident.

Caitlin was a very selfless, kind, giving person.

She really dedicated her life to wanting to help others.

And it was no surprise to any of us that she would want to be an organ donor.

She registered when she was 18.

She had a conversation with her mom that if anything had ever happened, she can't take her organs with her.

And she would want to help others.

So that really was her wish.

She was able to save six people through the gift of life.

And it has been a silver lining in our grief.

We have had the opportunity.

Her mom has had the opportunity to meet all of her recipients.

I have been lucky enough to meet her double lung recipient and form a relationship with her.

And I've also met her one kidney recipient and his daughter, who he named after Caitlin after his transplant, which has been really beautiful.

- And you're doing so much to honor Caitlin every day, especially here at the Sharing Network.

We're sitting in front of this beautiful view of the Meditation Garden.

And you said, just recently, you were in the Meditation Garden with Caitlin's family, honoring her in a unique way.

- Yeah, so our Meditation Garden here at New Jersey Sharing Network is solely funded by employee contributions, which is really beautiful.

It is gorgeous out there.

It is a nice, quiet space in nature for employees, but also families to come, and reflect, and honor their loved ones.

Take a second and just think about, you know, the gift and to really honor those donor heroes.

I was here on May 3rd, which would've been Caitlin's 30th birthday.

And we actually were able to dedicate a beautiful plaque to her out in the garden.

It was a beautiful way to celebrate her birthday and that gift of life.

And her double lung recipient was here with us as well, so.

- Such a full circle.

Beautiful moment.

- Just full circle and beautiful.

And I feel so lucky to work here.

And when I am here in the office, getting to go outside, and see her plaque, and look at all the stones that are dedicated to all the donors.

It's just a very beautiful space.

- You were an organ donor for your brother.

- I am.

- Talk about that experience.

- So my brother was diagnosed when he was very young.

He was about 12 years old when we found out that he had PSC, which is a rare liver disease.

And we knew at that moment that he would need a transplant inevitably.

And, in 2016, he was officially listed.

And when he was listed, then I began the testing process for the living donorship.

- [Jacqui] How old were you?

- I was, at that point, 26 years old.

And he was 20.

We're four and a half years apart.

So he was 21.

It's the best thing that I've ever done.

It's the, I think, the proudest thing I've ever done.

Like, on the way to the hospital that morning, because you have to check in, and they sit you side by side, and you're just kind of like, waiting for the surgeons to come in.

And he said, "This is my new birthday."

And then, when he woke up, he told me that I was his hero and that he loved me.

And I don't feel like a hero.

It's just like, if you know that you have a key to someone's happiness, tomorrow's hugs, like, sunny days, I can't fathom not giving that to someone.

- And you gave your brother this incredible gift.

And he was able to live so many beautiful years with you and your family.

But then tragedy hit.

- Yes.

- And your brother passed away.

Not from the liver disease, right?

- No.

Totally separate.

He had a brain aneurysm.

He was 29 years old.

No one had more medical workup than Nick.

- [Jacqui] Right.

- So it really came as a shock.

And believe it or not.

My brother was not a registered organ donor.

Because of all of his illnesses, he believed- - He thought maybe he wasn't the right candidate.

- Yeah, he believed that he wouldn't be able to.

And him and I had had a lot of conversations.

We were obviously very close.

And we always knew that like, if we ever had to make the decision, that that was the decision to be made.

That if something could be given, then that's what we would want to do.

So when they shared the news with my family and I that he was brain dead, and that there was no recovery possible, that was my first question.

It was can we donate his organs?

- And what was the process like?

What was he able to donate?

- He was able to donate his heart.

And we got the letter three weeks later that it went to a 65-year-old man that I may never know.

And it offers me such a sense of peace in my brother's passing.

Because, like, his heart is still beating somewhere.

Like, right now, as I'm sitting here, that person is getting to love their family the way that Nick did.

- Tell us about your mom, Doreen.

- Yeah, that's my best friend.

And I'm sure a lot of people that were close to her are going to say the same thing about her.

She was just that type of person.

I'm always just the happiest person in the room.

I'm always smiling.

Always just talking to people.

I'm always feeling good and she always- - That's your mom coming through on you.

- And that's my mom.

And something she always loved me doing.

Even, I mean, you know, I'm here because she's gone.

But she would love to see me, just talking about her.

You know, there's always this thing that she's always liked me doing.

Running.

She loves seeing me run.

I'm always just doing that for her.

I have memories of just doing that in school, high school.

I get to do all that for her.

I feel great that I can do that kind of thing for her.

- How is running different for you today, as opposed, because you're a runner.

You love running.

It's what you do.

But how does today feel different, when you're out there, running?

Because you carry a piece of your mom with you too, right?

You have something of hers with you while you're running?

Talk about that.

- Yeah, no, I always have a scarf.

Well, the past three years, I had this scarf that she had on on her last day.

So I do wear that with me when I run.

It makes me just, again, just feel that closeness with her.

And, again, maybe more motivation if I get tired.

Like, "Oh my God.

Okay, it's just a race.

I can just slow down.

No, she's with me.

Keep going.

You know you're doing this for her."

So I'm just doing that.

I need that.

I keep it with me.

- What do you think your mom's thinking, looking down on you and your family here today, celebrating her gifts of life?

And talk about the gifts that she did give.

Because it was very significant on the lives that she saved.

- My mom gave away three organs.

And I'm sure they saved, you know, three lives in the process.

So I'm proud of that.

You know, she's always been a hero to me when she was alive.

And she's hero again when she's gone, so.

Again, I think you could feel that too.

Anybody in this situation.

- So many heroes that we're celebrating here today.

Thousands of people here gathered.

Thank you for being one of them and being able to share your story with us.

We really appreciate it.

- Thank you so much.

- Thank you to our senior correspondent, Jacqui Tricarico.

And for Jacqui and our entire team here at "One-on-One," we thank you so much for watching.

See you next time.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

The Russell Berrie Foundation.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Kean University.

The North Ward Center.

PSE&G.

The Adler Aphasia Center.

New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.

And by Community FoodBank of New Jersey.

Promotional support provided by Meadowlands Media.

And by NJ.Com.

Here at Kean University, everyone gets their chance to climb higher.

Michael came to Kean and found his passion for health care, and now he's a doctor.

After Tricia graduated, her graphic design work was featured in The New York Times.

Samantha is studying athletic training and finding her path to an internship with the New York Giants.

Real Students.

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