EDISON — In April 2015, Jonathan Baksh waited in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles to renew his driver’s license.
On the form he checked the box to become an organ donor.
“He told me ‘Mom, I want to be like you’,” Sally Yabra recalled her son telling her as she stood in line with him.
Yabra even snapped a photo of her son smiling with his new driver’s license.
Baksh, a 2013 Edison High School graduate, was just 19 years old when he tragically lost his life while swimming with friends at Martins Creek quarry in Lower Mount Bethel, Pennsylvania, in August 2015.
Since then, his organs and tissues have helped countless people.
“Jon is here changing lives,” Yabra said. “He always had a forward-thinking mind, selfless, always thought of others, not himself.”
April marked Donate Life Month and MTF Biologics celebrated with a series of events to encourage organ and tissue donation and honor those who have given the gift of life.
MTF Biologics, which is headquartered in Edison, is the world’s largest tissue bank. Donate Life Month is about encouraging people to register not only as organ donors, but as tissue donors as well.
One tissue donor can save and heal the lives of as many as 100 people through turning donated skin, bones, tendons and fat into allografts used in a multitude of life-changing procedures, including post-mastectomy breast reconstruction, sports medicine, wound/burn healing, and orthopedic procedures.
“While organs must be preserved immediately, bone, skin, tissue, tendons, once processed at our site, can be donate up to five years,” said George Herrera, vice presidents of donor services at MTF. “The graphs are then distributed to hospitals all around the world and used by surgeons as they see fit.”
The bones and tissue from Baksh came to MTF unbeknownst to Yabra until some friendly talk at her coffee shop, The Coffee House, on Amboy Avenue.
“Many of our employees get coffee in the morning and one thing led to another we made the connection about Jonathan. … It’s a small world,” he said.
National Blue and Green Day was held on April 13 at The Coffee House. The day welcomed a gathering of tissue donor families, recipients and supporters.
Lori Smith of Edison, a volunteer for the New Jersey Sharing Network, was on hand to provide information about organ and tissue donation.
Smith said every chance she gets she spreads the word about organ/tissue donation. It was four years ago when Smith suddenly fell ill and needed a kidney transfer.
“I was diagnosed with IgA nephropathy, a rare kidney disease,” she said.
Through the sharing network and seven living donors, including her daughter, Tara Smith, she found a match.
“The procedures took over two days at St. Barnabas Medical Center [in Livingston],” she said. “A month later, I was able to meet the whole chain of donors.”
On April 26, the community came together at The Skylark Diner on Route 1 to support Donate Life Month and honor the life of Baksh, who used to work at the diner.
A percentage of the proceeds from customers who showed their Donate Life Month voucher went toward the New Jersey Sharing Network Foundation and Gift of Life Family House.
Bone Tones, MTF Biologic’s resident band, was on hand to provide jazzy tunes for customers enjoying dinner/happy hour.
For more information, visit www.njsharingnetwork.org.
