The State - News from Jan. 31, 1986

A week-old baby born with a heart defect awaits surgery today after an anonymous donor paid $30,000 to send the Santa Ana infant, his parents and a four-member medical team to pioneering heart surgeons in Boston. Before the donation, the parents had considered a rare infant-to-infant heart transplant at Loma Linda University Medical Center, where there have been a handful of such operations, including the transplant of a baboon’s heart on “Baby Fae,” who died 20 days later. “We had better chances here (in Boston) than there. But since we didn’t have any money. . . . We’re poor people,” Mayela Rodriguez Orozco said in an interview from Children’s Hospital in Boston. A medical spokeswoman had said chances for getting a suitable heart for a transplant in time to save the baby were slim. The Boston hospital is one of a few that specializes in the relatively new surgery to correct hypoplastic left heart syndrome.