San Francisco Giants “Donate Life” Day

On July 8, the San Francisco Giants held their 18th Annual Organ Donor Awareness Day (now known as Donate Life Day). Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford has been a key part of this event since its inception in 1998. It’s an opportunity for the community to celebrate lives that have been saved through organ donation.

At this event, six transplant patients were recognized – all were treated as VIPs, receiving tickets for their families and receiving generous gift bags from the Giants. One of the highlights included patients having their names on the scoreboard at the end of the 5th inning, and Bode Everist had his living donor’s name on the scoreboard as well.

A large contingent from the hospital’s liver transplant team were there to support the honorees: physician assistants Humberto (Tito) Monge and Rachna Shah; G-I and liver transplant faculty member John Kerner, M.D. (co-founder of the event); Denise Alloway, clinical social worker; Pushpa Nandagopal, Mariel Junio, and Lisa Campbell.

The Giants’ Donate Life Day event is the longest running organ donor event in all of professional sports.