Woman who received Maine boy’s heart makes surprise visit to donor’s family

OWLS HEAD, Maine (BDN) -- Rachel Dunn and the family of Nick Stevens say they are joined at the heart.

When she was 7 years old, Dunn received Nick’s heart after the 8-year-old Owls Head boy died as the result of a fall.

“God and Nick could not have picked a more special person to receive his heart,” said the boy’s mother, Melissa Stevens.

Dunn’s affection for the Stevens family is just as strong.

“They are not an extension of my family. They are my family,” Dunn, 24, said Monday from her home in Haddon Heights, New Jersey.

Born with a serious heart defect, Dunn had been on a transplant waiting list since age 1. During what was supposed to be a routine checkup at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia when she was 7, she was told she would have to stay in the hospital until a heart was found. After a wait of about two months, she received Nick’s.

The organ bank permits contact between the donor’s family and the recipient one year after the transplant if both sides want to get acquainted. So, a little more than a year after Dunn received Nick’s heart, the Dunn and Stevens families met at the Delaware home of a close friend of Melissa Stevens.

Since then, a bond has grown between the families.

Dunn said she considers Melissa and Russell Stevens her second parents and their sons, Noah, 19, and Cole, 14, the brothers she never had.

Dunn, who is the youngest of three sisters in her New Jersey family, has come to Maine three times to visit the Stevens family. Her most recent visit was a surprise for Melissa Stevens arranged by Stevens’ sons.

Stevens said she gave Dunn a big hug at the door.

“I could hear his heart beating against my chest,” Stevens said.

Stevens said Nick lives on in Dunn. She said that the similarities between her son and Dunn are amazing. Nick loved soccer, Legos, reading and carpenter pants, as has Dunn.

During her visits to Maine, Dunn has made it a point to do things she has never previously done. Most recently it was firing a gun, which she did with Noah Stevens, who is a criminal justice student at Husson University. She also has taken a ride on a lobster boat and drove a pickup truck.

Dunn, who is working on a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy at LaSalle University in Philadelphia, said she helps to keep Nick’s memory alive by speaking to high school students about the importance of organ donations.

Each day, an average of 79 people in this country receive organ transplants and another 22 people are still waiting for a transplant, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. About 2,200 heart transplants are performed in the United States annually, according to Columbia University Department of Surgery. Fifty percent of recipients live more than 10 years with their new hearts.

Maine drivers can state on their motor vehicles licenses whether they want to be a donor.

In addition to signing up as potential organ donors, Nick’s family created a scholarship fund in his memory that they started with the money that was in his college fund. Every year they hold a fundraiser and award a $1,000 scholarship to a Rockland District high school student.

In June 2009, the year Nick would have graduated from high school, the memorial fund awarded not only a $1,000 scholarship but also $250 scholarships to any college-bound student who attended second grade with Nick.

Dunn came to that graduation ceremony and helped hand out the scholarships.

Melissa Stevens said that once she and her husband accepted that Nick would not regain consciousness, they decided that if his heart stopped before he was brain dead, they would not donate his organs. As it turned out, his brain stopped first, and his parents donated his heart, kidneys, liver, lungs and corneas.

Stevens said she sent letters to the organ bank for every recipient. She heard back from Dunn and once from a young girl who received Nick’s lungs.

Dunn said people ask her how she could have forged a relationship with the family who donated their child’s heart, but she said it has been easy.

“I’ve been humbled by the experience,” Dunn said.