The heart

of Bobbi Fetzer’s 7-yearold son now beats in the chest of 17-year-old girl.

“Michael isn’t here physically but he’s growing up through his recipients,” says the Fargo mother who lost her son on June 3, 2011, and decided to donate his organs to help others.

June 2 was the last day of school and Mikey was at a friend’s house when he decided to head home to ask permission to spend the night there. The second-grader was hit by a pickup truck as he crossed the street.

Just weeks before he died, Mikey had been inspired by a presentation by West Fargo Elementary School Principal Loren Kersting. He had lost his daughter as she waited for an organ donor. Mikey told his family he wanted to be an organ donor. “I thought ‘When you turn 16 and get your driver’s license – then you can sign up to be an organ donor because your mom and dad are donors,’ ” Bobbi recalls.

Bobbi and her husband, Jeffrey, decided to donate Mikey’s heart, liver, kidneys, pancreas, intestines, eyes and tissues. His heart saved the life of Mia Brickey, then an 11-year-old Salt Lake City girl whose heart was failing due to a rare condition.

Her parents, Tom and Heidi Brickey, first thought their daugh- ter had the flu. As her condition rapidly declined, they learned a transplant was her only option. “They told us the average waiting time for a heart is five months,” Tom recalls. Mia’s doctor believed she had only five days.

“I gave permission for them to go ahead with a transplant no matter what heart came,” Tom says. “I said don’t bring me a bad heart.”

Mikey’s heart turned out to be a perfect match.

“We’d been faced with death,” Heidi says. “Mia was in a room dying when we learned the possibility of getting a heart. We were elated, but the feeling was unreal. You really don’t know how to feel because at the other end there is sorrow and a severe loss for someone else.”

Mia is now a healthy 17-year-old high school senior who plans to go to college. She passed the five-year milestone for transplant patients without complications, which her parents were told means she’ll live a full life.

“It’s Mia but it’s still Mikey,” Bobbi says. “He’s living on through her and doing all the things that she does.”

“Mikey is part of Mia and she knows it — she lives it every single day,” Heidi says. “Mia calls Mikey her ‘little heart warrior.’ ”

The Brickeys say they can’t express the gratitude they feel for the Fetzer family. “Their gift keeps our lives in perspective,” Heidi says. “We teach our kids to be grateful for what you are given. We were given the ultimate gift and we try to live it in our day-to-day lives.”

Bobbi says Mikey’s liver went to an 11-monthold girl who is now a healthy 6-year-old. A kidney went to a father of six who was on dialysis.

Both families have become advocates for organ donation. Bobbi, who works as a unit secretary in the Emergency Department at Essentia Health-Fargo, has been trained as a certified designated requester. She meets with families facing a loved one’s death and asks them to consider organ donation. She answers questions and provides emotional support during a difficult time. “I can make a personal connection because I’ve been there,” she says.

Bobbi was one of the advocates for a new memorial wall in the Emergency Department’s waiting room that honors donors and their families for their gifts of organs, eyes and tissues. “This is a place for families to know that their loved ones are not forgotten,” says Bobbi, who explains the wall is also intended to raise awareness about the need for donors.

“Organ donation has been such a good experience for our family,” Bobbi says. “If we hadn’t donated Mikey’s organs, we wouldn’t be as close as we are, or as well-functioning as we are today. We could have let it be a tragedy but we turned it into something else. We turned our tragedy into a miracle.”

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Become A Donor

When you check “donor” on your driver’s license application, you’ve made a legally binding decision to be an organ, eye and tissue donor. It’s that simple.

If you live in North Dakota or Minnesota, you can also register online at donatelifend.org or donatelifemn.org.

In North Dakota, Minnesota and South Dakota the organ donation process is overseen by LifeSource. The non-profit organization is federally designated to manage organ and tissue donations in the region.

For more information, or to register as an organ donor, go to life-source.org.