Out of Tragedy, a New Life

It was Jordan York, 4 months old, who gave Nick Draper, 7 months old, the gift of life.

Hour after hour, Jordan lay still and silent, his tiny heart beating valiantly against the odds. His doctors declared him brain dead.

His mother put everything in God’s hands. A hospital chaplain baptized him. His mother and father held his small fingers. With the chaplain, they said the Lord’s Prayer. At that moment, his mother decided: The doctors could take Jordan off life support, and her baby would give his heart to someone else.

So it happened, said Jordan’s mother, Tracey York, 27, in an interview Sunday, that her baby’s heart was flown on a special jet from Pensacola, Fla., across the nation to Los Angeles, where it was transplanted into Nick Draper’s chest 11 days ago at UCLA Medical Center.

Doctors said Nick would have died without it. Now, with Jordan’s little heart beating in his chest, Nick was improving each day. Doctors said he should be able to live a normal life, at least until he is a teenager and might have to have another transplant.

To Jordan’s parents, Nick’s life was a consolation for their baby’s tragic death. He suffocated accidentally, the family said, when he pulled a pillow -- or it fell -- across his face on a bed at the home of his grandfather and step-grandmother in Panama City, Fla. The parents and grandparents said police investigated and found no foul play.

Indeed, for the family of Jordan York, his gift of a new heart to Nick Draper will bring life-long comfort. “If his heart is still beating, even in someone else, in our eyes he is still there,” Tracey York said as she was interviewed with her husband, Russell, 28, at the home of her brother in the Cincinnati suburb of Loveland, where they and their older daughter had gone to grieve.

Meanwhile, Nicole Draper, 32, her husband, Mike, 33, and their three older children prayed for a second new heart -- this one for Nick’s identical twin, Nate. He, too, was at UCLA Medical Center, suffering from dilated cardiomyopathy, the heart disease that afflicted his brother. Doctors said Nate’s condition was growing worse.

In Grandparents’ Care

The story of Nick’s gift began the day before Valentine’s Day.

After seeing their daughter off to school, Jordan’s parents left their small beige-and-pink, brick-and-wood home on a quiet street in Panama City, Fla., and drove him to the home of Larry and Jane York, his grandfather and step-grandmother.

They took care of him every day while his parents worked. Jordan’s father managed the kitchen at a Panama City restaurant. His mother was the cashier at another.

A bit after 10 a.m., Larry York said in a telephone interview, he fed Jordan, and the youngster laughed and played, just as he always did. He had blue eyes, big ears, a sly smile and a bald temple. His family liked to call him Yoda.

Finally, his grandfather said, Jordan grew fussy -- a sign that he was getting tired.

Jane York said, during the telephone interview, that she picked him up and took him to a bedroom. She said she lay him on his back on a queen-size bed. Jordan had a hard time going to sleep on his stomach.

She turned on a television to cartoons. Under his head, she said, she placed a small pillow. Then she covered him with a blanket, up to his chest.

Along both sides, she tucked bigger pillows, she said, so he wouldn’t roll off the bed. As she left the room, she said, she saw that Jordan was asleep. She said she also noticed three large pillows stacked on top of each other, also on the bed. Because Jordan’s grandfather had heart problems, he slept with all three under his head.

Jane York said she didn’t think much about the pillows because they seemed to be out of Jordan’s reach.

“It just didn’t look like he could get to them,” she said.

She said she joined Jordan’s grandfather in the kitchen for 15 minutes. When she returned to the bedroom, she said, she saw a horrible sight:

One of the pillows from the stack was lying across Jordan’s face.

He wasn’t moving.

She said she picked up the pillow.

Jordan had turned blue.

He must have reached up and touched the stack of pillows, she and Larry York said, and one of them had come tumbling down on top of him.

Tracey and Russell York and Jane and Larry York said a Panama City police investigator asked hard questions about what had happened and decided it was an accident. Neither the investigator nor a police spokesperson could be reached for comment Sunday.

Taken to the Hospital

When paramedics arrived, they said Jordan barely had a pulse. They took him to a hospital in Panama City. Not long after his parents got there, Jordan was airlifted to a hospital in Pensacola, better equipped to help. His parents followed in their car. The two-hour drive, they said, seemed to take two days.

Jordan’s father, a wiry, one-time high school football star who prided himself on being tough, was a wreck. He could not stand to see his son, whom he and his wife had wanted so badly for five years, growing bloated, cold and stiff. Russell York said his own heart raced. His stomach turned, and he began suffering dry heaves.

He was admitted temporarily to the emergency room. “You could have told me anything, and I would have believed it,” he said. “I wasn’t all there.... Nothing was making sense.”

Jordan’s mother said she almost never left her baby. She did not want to let go, even when doctors came that night and said there was no hope: Jordan was brain-dead. Organ transplant specialists arrived. Could Jordan’s heart be taken from his chest, they asked, so that some other baby might live? And could his other organs be saved, as well?

“I looked at them as if they were the Grim Reaper,” Tracey York said. A slender, gentle woman with flowing brown hair, she cried as she remembered her words. “I tried to avoid them. I told nurses to get them out of my face.”

Midnight Baptism

As it neared midnight, the chaplain arrived for Jordan’s baptism.

His parents recalled their prayer vividly. “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.... “ Small drops of water fell on their baby. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.... “ The water moved slowly around his eyes and down his cheeks. “On Earth as it is in heaven.” His face glistened.

Tracey York knew what she and her husband had to do. Russell York agreed. After the baptism, they told the doctors to take Jordan off life support and give his heart to another child. They offered his other organs, as well.

On Valentine’s Day, doctors and aides huddled over computers and cellphones looking for a baby who needed Jordan’s heart. He remained on life support while they consulted a national transplant list and tried to match chest sizes and blood types.

Jordan’s family held him.

Wires cascaded from his body, and a breathing tube reached down his throat. Family and friends brought presents: teddy bears, his father’s football jersey and a special gift -- a little heart-shaped pendant with “Jordan” inscribed on it.

Finally, on Feb. 15, the transplant specialists found a match.

Organ donation laws kept the Yorks and the Drapers from knowing much about each other. Unless both families wanted to learn more, they had to be satisfied with only the most basic information. Gender. Age. Region of the country.

Russell and Tracey York were told that the match for Jordan’s heart was in Los Angeles, that his heart would go to a boy, and that the baby and his family had received public attention.

That Wednesday evening, a jet from Los Angeles brought doctors to inspect Jordan’s heart. If it was healthy and was a proper match, it would be taken out of his chest, and he would be removed from life support.

At 11:45 p.m., Jordan’s mother, father, maternal grandmother and paternal great-grandmother surrounded his bed.

“Seconds seemed to turn to minutes ... minutes to hours,” Jordan’s father recalled. He held one of Jordan’s hands, and Jordan’s mother held the other. They filled a small, pink-and-white sea shell with oil. In tears, Jordan’s family said the Lord’s Prayer again and poured the oil onto his chest.

His mother and father rubbed it gently.

Jordan didn’t move. He didn’t open his eyes.

But it was enough.

A Mother’s Anguish

As the Yorks spoke in their interview, they sat on a couch in her brother’s living room, clutching a blanket that had wrapped Jordan at the hospital.

It was decorated with a butterfly of many colors, a symbol of life, they said. They smiled and laughed as they remembered their baby.

But their voices broke and they cried when they recalled his death.

In the days that followed, they said, they searched the Internet for reports from Los Angeles about a heart transplant. They found stories from The Times about Nick and Nate.

When Tracey York read about Nick’s transplant, she said, she felt a twinge of envy, even anger: Someone else had her baby’s heart; if doctors could transplant a heart, why couldn’t they have saved Jordan?

But she held her emotions in check.

At the same time, she said, she felt glad that the part of Jordan that so symbolized his soul was still alive.

The Yorks happily discovered that the Drapers were a family of humility, strength and strong religious convictions. More than that, they were Mormon. So was Russell York, and Tracey proudly said she had an affinity for Mormon teachings.

There were other similarities. Both Mike Draper and Russell York, it turned out, had grown up in the South. Both loved football.

The families said they were eager to meet.

When she was told about the Yorks, Nicole Draper thought back to Nick’s surgery, to their own prayers and how they had blessed their baby.

All they knew at the time was that a family somewhere had just gone through a tragedy and that the family had made a courageous decision to give their baby’s heart to Nick.

“We’ve talked so much about wanting to meet them,” Nicole Draper said. “There’s an intimate connection we feel. We’re so grateful and in such awe. In their time of difficulty, they gave us a chance. I want them to know that.”

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Kurt Streeter can be reached at kurt.streeter@latimes.com.