Organ Recipients Treated Like Family

As Larry Levinson watched news footage of a Mardi Gras riot in Seattle five years ago from his hospital bed, he got so mad that a nurse unplugged the television. With a heart as weak as his, he didn't need the stress. But a 20-year-old man who died in the melee would end up saving Levinson's life.

Levinson received a transplanted heart from that young man, Kris Kime.

This weekend, Levinson will be there when Kime's little sister gets married. Several other recipients of Kime's organs are invited, too.

"To me ... it was just like inviting my brother," said Kirsten Kime, 22.

Levinson, 67, had been on the transplant list for years with cardiomyopathy, an illness that weakens the muscles of the heart. He was near death on Feb. 27, 2001, as thousands of Mardi Gras revelers packed into Seattle's Pioneer Square district.

"I had a few days left," Levinson said from his home in Gig Harbor, about 25 miles from Seattle. "My heart rate was running at about 15 to 20 percent and I was having heart attacks, angina attacks."

As the party raged into the early hours of the next day, roving groups of young men beat people at random. Some wielded brass knuckles. Others swung skateboards like baseball bats.

Kris Kime was caught in the melee while trying to help a woman who had been shoved to the ground, witnesses said. He was pummeled, fell and bashed his head. He was declared brain dead less than a day later.

The story was big enough that Levinson and others in line to get transplants put two and two together after doctors told them their new organs came from a 20-year-old man who had died of head injuries.

Jessie Bettes, a 51-year-old Boeing Co. employee, received one of Kime's kidneys. Ray Page, 63, got the other. Ray Allison received Kime's lungs. Martha French was given Kime's pancreas.

The Kime family has organized reunions for the organ recipients a few times over the past five years. Every time Kime's mother sees Levinson, she puts her ear to his chest and marvels that her boy's heart is still beating.

Page said he will not be able to make the wedding because he has to work, but he sent Kirsten Kime and her fiance some margarita money to spend on their honeymoon in Mexico. Bettes hopes to go, if she can fight off a bout of laryngitis. Levinson said he will be there in the first new suit he has bought in years.

"You need to understand: We're family," Levinson said. "So it didn't surprise me at all that I got invited."

In death, "Kris is so much bigger than Kris was," said Jill Steinhaus, executive director of the Living Legacy Foundation, a branch of the LifeCenter Northwest Donor Network, which helped arrange the donation. "And that's really because of his family and the people who received his organs. They will never forget that young man. And they won't let us either."