Gift of the Heart

Felipe Garza had never been considered a standout among the teenagers in the central California farming town of Patterson, Calif. Small for a 15-year-old, he did poorly in his eighth-grade class and sometimes clowned to mask his feelings of depression. His family was poor and lived in a converted motel. Yet after Felipe died last week, nearly 500 of Patterson's 4,700 residents attended his funeral to accord him the respect he had not attained in life.

Felipe had developed a crush on Donna Ashlock, 14, a freckle-faced student who worked as a waitress at the Tiger's Den Drive-in. "He loved to be around her," recalled one of Donna's friends. Last summer Felipe dated her, just once. Shortly before Christmas, he learned that Donna had an enlarged heart and was not expected to live more than two months. Felipe too had a health problem: he suffered from severe headaches. He told his mother, "If I die, give my heart to my girlfriend." When a blood vessel ruptured in Felipe's brain, killing him, his heart was transplanted into Donna's chest. Said her father Raymond: "Without what he did for Donna, there would be two tragedies instead of one."