East Meadow mother meets one of her late daughter's organ recipients

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Just two days before Thanksgiving, Ava Jacobs, 59, of East Meadow, shared gratitude with the woman who had received one of her daughter’s kidneys.

Jacobs accompanied her daughter Alexis Zayas on a June skydiving trip to Jumptown Skydiving in Orange, Mass. She watched as Zayas’s parachute veered off course, and later found out that she had hit a barn and sustained serious injuries. Zayas died on June 4, at age 27.

Two days later, Jacobs shared what had happened in a post on Facebook. She added that her daughter was an organ donor, and asked friends and family members to contact her if they knew anyone on a donor list so she could coordinate what is known as a direct donation.

“It was the first and probably only thing to offer me a degree of comfort,” Jacobs said, explaining that Zayas had devoted her life to people and relationships.

Before long, Jacobs heard from Sherryl Garry, who was Zayas’s seventh-grade math teacher at Woodland Middle School in East Meadow. Garry’s sister Linda Dolinger, 59, of Bellmore, had been diagnosed with high blood pressure 10 years ago, which led to kidney failure.

Dolinger began seeking a transplant in April, but was put on a waiting list that her doctors said would leave her without an organ for at least five years. While many friends and family members had offered to donate, none of was a match. Fortunately, Zayas’s kidney was compatible.

“Linda was absolutely meant to have my daughter’s kidney,” Jacobs said.

Dr. Ernesto Molmenti, Dolinger’s surgeon at North Shore University Hospital, called the circumstances an “incredible miracle.”

Jacobs said that her daughter donated everything. She cut her hair for Locks for Love as a child, was a regular blood and plasma donor and gave clothes to local shelters — often asking her friends if they had any unwanted clothes that she could donate as well.
While Jacobs wasn’t previously a registered organ donor, for religious reasons, she said that her daughter’s decision to register had changed her mind. “She really is my hero,” she said.

Zayas’s friends and family prepared a statement to be read to the recipients of her organs: “Alexis was a contradiction. She was a shooting star, yet grounded as hell. Alexis did not believe in angels, yet she was an angel sent to us from above.”

Before receiving one of Zayas’s kidneys, Dolinger recalled, she experienced constant fatigue, waking up to go to work, then coming home and falling asleep. Now, she said, she has more energy than ever before and her prognosis is “incredible,” according to Molmenti.
“I feel like Alexis is with me every single day,” Dolinger said.

So far, five people have received Zayas’s organs, including her kidneys, heart, lungs and liver. Her pancreas and intestines were also harvested and are awaiting matches.

“I can’t imagine having to do what you did,” Dolinger told Jacobs after meeting her on Tuesday at North Shore. “I have kids the same age Alexis was, and I just can’t imagine it.”

Jacobs embraced her and said, “Thank God, you don’t.”
She described her daughter as one of the “strongest and bravest” people she knew. Above her left breast, she has tattooed a design that her daughter created that reads “free spirit.” Asked what Zayas would say if she could see what was taking place this day, Jacobs smiled.

“She’d be doing cartwheels,” she said. “Or a high dive, or swimming laps.”