Here are the stories of a donor family and a recipient:

SHARON SCHREIBER: DONOR DAUGHTER

Sharon Schreiber credits the bravery of her dying stepfather, "the love of my mother's life," with making the tough decision that made her loss bearable.

Bob Dame was terminally ill with cancer when Sharon's mother, Barbara, died suddenly in September 1998. The family had never discussed organ donation and she was not a registered donor. When LifeNet approached him, Dame had to decide quickly whether to give consent for the use of her organs. He agreed, though he balked at tissue donation.

"I think he saved my life by saying 'yes.' That was healing for me." says Sharon, 42, who has spent the decade since advocating for organ donation. Her mother, she notes proudly, saved the lives of three different men through the gift of both kidneys and her liver.

Though Dame had the final say-so, Schreiber was intimately involved in the procedure, acting as her ailing stepfather's voice at the now defunct Sentara Hampton General Hospital, where her mother was on life support overnight. LifeNet asked her all sorts of really hard questions, some questions she couldn't answer, she recalls, about her mother's health history and even her sex life.

The mother and daughter were exceptionally close. They vacationed together, they looked after each other, they both worked at the Newport News shipyard — and they both suffered from anxiety and depression. The depression, exacerbated by her husband's failing health, led Barbara to take her own life in Sharon's backyard.

What Sharon remembers is people distracting her at the scene and then, at the hospital, the kindness of the LifeNet Health representative. "She treated my mom like she was my mom. She was very respectful. She kept calling her Barbara. She held her hand during the surgery." And she called the day after the organs were harvested to tell Sharon about what happened.

Sharon wrote the obituary and made the funeral arrangements, including a viewing with an open casket. "They take the utmost care," she says, emphasizing that there was no difference in her mother's outward appearance from the donation of her organs.

"I thought it was all over," she says, but a little over a month later Sharon heard again from LifeNet coordinator Amy Iveson. In a letter of appreciation, Iveson let her know they were not able to use the heart and lungs because of an infection caused by the respirator. She then detailed which organs were used and who received them, citing the recipients' gender, age, general family situation and geographical location. "The liver went to a 35-year-old gentleman in South Carolina. ... He is doing well. He has a 4-year-old son and enjoys reading and swimming," wrote Iveson. She also expressed condolences on the death of Sharon's stepfather, Bob, who passed away a month to the day after Barbara. LifeNet allows donor families and recipients to correspond through the organization, and, if they both want to meet, a meeting is arranged. "I've never thought about it," says Sharon. "If they wanted to meet me, that would be fine."

The following April, Sharon, who not only keeps a meticulous scrapbook of mementos and events but also drives cars with the license plates — MOM DID and DNR DTR (donor daughter) — attended the "In Celebration and Remembrance" event at LifeNet. That's when, each year, the names of the year's donors are read aloud and a screen scrolls the names of all previous donors. In May, for Mother's Day, Sharon's present to her mom was to get a tattoo with a green ribbon, the symbol for organ donation, and "mom" in her handwriting with a photo in the Donor Family Quarterly.

JOAN LAUDERMILK: HEART RECIPIENT

Joan Laudermilk, 69, takes 41 medications a day but feels like she's very healthy. "I can do a lot more than before," she says. "Before" refers to the years before she received a new heart on June 7, 2001, after more than 30 years of heart disease. As a mother of two young children, Laudermilk suffered a heart attack at the age of 28. Now a grandmother, she walks a mile every day, does all her own housework, and tends the large garden at the Hampton home she shares with her husband, Clyde. She also does outreach work and raises money for heart organizations, and promotes organ transplants.

"I won't say there haven't been bumps in the road," she says. She initially had problems from the heavy dosage of anti-rejection drugs and suffered seizures. Subsequently, Laudermilk also had colon surgery and a mass removed from her ovary. "The first year you owe to the hospital," she says, and for a couple of years there are days when you don't want to crawl out of bed, she adds. Initially she had weekly biopsies to check for rejection. Now she sees a doctor once a year.

In her mid-50s Laudermilk felt prematurely aged, drained of energy and no longer able to walk. Her cardiologist predicted accurately that she would need a heart transplant in five years. "I thought they were only for rich people, not for the middle-class or poor," says Laudermilk, who worked a variety of office and retail jobs over the years, including opening and operating her own antique shop.

After her pacemaker failed on Mother's Day 2001, the doctors kept her in the hospital, and she went through the screening to get on the transplant list. "There's lots of paperwork. If I'd ever done drugs they wouldn't have done it. They did massive amounts of blood work — they took 19 vials — they can tell your whole health history," she says.