DALLAS — Organ donation can create a ripple effect that impacts multiple people and their families. Two women, connected by just that, are celebrating a 10-year friendship that they admit has helped save them both.
On February 3, 2014, Dawn Sterling and her daughters Connely and Courtney wanted to go to Dairy Queen. During the trip near their home in Lumberton in far southeast Texas, another driver at speeds estimated well over 100 miles an hour hit them from behind.
Connely, 20, who was also 7 and 1/2 months pregnant, was killed instantly. Courtney was critically injured but still alive. Their mom Dawn would survive after more than a month in intensive care.
But while she was unconscious, Dawn's husband had to make the difficult decision alone to donate Courtney's organs when doctors told him she would not recover from the severe trauma of the crash. The 15-year-old had told her parents when she got her driving permit that she did want to be an organ donor. Courtney's organs would eventually save the lives of five people.
But once she was out of the hospital, and grieving the loss of both of her daughters and a grandson, Dawn decided she didn't want to live anymore. The plan was to take her car and drive off a bridge.
"I was going out of town that weekend and I was going to commit suicide. There was no coming back," Dawn Sterling said.
But she says on the day she was planning to do just that, she received a letter.
Lisa Barker from Frisco received Courtney's liver. The gift came just in time. Doctors had given her just 48 hours to live due to acute liver failure. Four months after her successful surgery she felt compelled to send a two-page letter of thanks to Courtney's parents.
"I want you to know how grateful and thankful I am for the gift that has been given to me," she wrote. "I will honor, cherish, and respect this gift every day."
Dawn Sterling says she read the letter while sitting in the middle of her driveway. It changed everything.
"And that was the beginning of it all," Sterling said. "That's why I'm still here 10 years later too."
"A relationship that we never dreamed of, could have never imagined," said Lisa Barker as the two met again at Southwest Transplant Alliance in Dallas.
Because these 10 years later they continue to educate anyone, and in any way they can, about the ripple effect of organ donation. Lisa Barker remains healthy with no signs of rejection. She and her husband are now the proud parents of two adopted sons. Her husband also, when confronted with the needs of a co-worker, decided to become a living kidney donor. And Lisa Barker's father, suffering from kidney failure just last year, became a kidney recipient too.
"Organ donation is such a ripple effect," Lisa Barker said. "And so it just continues on."
And this decade-old friendship continues. Both families are active in each other's lives. Dawn Sterling and her husband serve as a welcome second set of grandparents for the Barker children.
"To be able to have this relationship and then to get to share that with others I think will always be a mission that we have together," Lisa Barker said.
"They're my kids. She's mine," Dawn Sterling said as the two held hands. "So I'm here for them and that's all there is to it."
So to whomever might listen, they will tell their story about how organ donation saved them both.
"Courtney saved her life," Dawn Sterling said. "She saved mine."
"You never know what could come from it but it's very healing on both sides," Lisa Barker said.
"It's so bizarre," Dawn Sterling said of the relationship. "But it's perfect."
A perfect life-saving friendship to help them both survive that one very horrible day.
If you'd like to learn more about organ donation, you can visit the Southwest Transplant Alliance website here.