Family of Donor Supports Heart Transplant : Sister: Taking Brother’s Heart Was ‘Good’

Eleno Ullua Ramirez, his relatives say, was a lucky man.

Three years ago, when he was just 16 years old, he won $50,000 in the California Lottery. He bought a car, rented an apartment and began sending money home to his mother in Michoacan, Mexico.

He himself had emigrated from Mexico about seven years ago. And after scraping together the trail of his life in the shadows, he was waiting to become a legal U.S. resident under the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s amnesty program.

But Ullua, 19, of Costa Mesa died Wednesday morning after paramedics found him lying unconscious on the sidewalk in front of a Circle K market in Costa Mesa early Tuesday. His skull had been cracked, apparently from a blow to the head.

But because he carried no identification, not even his family knew until Friday that it was Ullua’s heart that had been transplanted into Dr. Norton Humphreys, 58, a retired family practitioner from Fountain Valley suffering from a degenerative heart disease.

“I hope that the heart is as good for him as it was for my brother,” said Ullua’s sister, Maria Celsa Torres, 28, as she sat with her husband and their four children in their Costa Mesa apartment.

“They said that he was going to call me,” Torres, who speaks only Spanish, said of Humphreys. “I really hope he does. I think it was good what they did, taking my brother’s heart.

“They saved another life. Yes, it is painful for us, but we have to accept the reality of it.”

Torres said Ullua, the youngest of four siblings, had visited with her Monday evening when he stopped by to play with his nieces and nephew. They watched television, and he helped her 10-year-old daughter, Julia, with her homework.

“We didn’t even have the most remote idea that he was in the hospital,” Torres said.

But Ullua’s father, who lives in Anaheim, had tried to reach his son Tuesday. When he was unable to find him, he contacted Torres, a housewife, and her family. Torres, in turn, had commented to some of her neighbors that her brother seemed to be missing.

Then a friend who worked at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian told her of an unidentified Latino man on life support systems. Torres thought the man could be her brother.

Body Identified Friday

Torres’ husband, janitor Trinidad Torres, 27, went to the hospital Thursday night. But after supplying authorities with information about Ullua, he came home without confirmation that the dead man was, in fact, his brother-in-law.

Torres said that on Friday morning, people she assumed were plainclothes police officers came to her home and took her to identify her brother’s body.

“So many things have happened that I really don’t know what is going on,” she said, idly stroking the forehead of her 19-month-old son, Javier, as he lay on the couch beside her.

“I don’t know how all this is going to end,” she said. “I still haven’t cried. The tears dried up.”

As Torres spoke, her husband left in an attempt to find Ullua’s father to tell him of his son’s death. His mother, Torres said, called her this morning to let Ullua know that the money he had just wired her had arrived.

But Torres said she decided not to tell her mother of her brother’s death without first telling her two other brothers who live in Mexico.

“She is a diabetic, and I am afraid that if I just tell her over the phone, it will not be good,” she said.

Supported Mother

Torres said she and her family assumed that Ullua lived off his lottery earnings because he never discussed a job with them. She said that ever since he won the money three years ago, he has supported his mother by sending home anywhere from $100 to $300 every two weeks.

“What he loved to do was play video games,” she said. “He was just crazy about that. And Disneyland. He loved Disneyland. He was just a little kid at heart.”

Torres said her brother did not have a girlfriend or, as far as she knew, any close friends. His mother came from Mexico to live with him for a while, she said. His father claimed his lottery winnings because he was so young and in the United States illegally, she said.

“He would come here (to Torres’ home) as often as he could,” she added. “He was nice to people. I think he was good. He never hurt anybody.”

Torres and her husband said they were not given any information about the circumstances of her brother’s death beyond the fact that he was apparently hit on the head. She said she was unaware of any drug use or illegal activity by her brother.

Doctors at Hoag hospital have said alcohol and cocaine were found in Ullua’s system before he was declared dead.

‘At Least One Is Alive’

“What happened was good,” added Ullua’s niece, Julia. “Instead of two people dying, at least one is alive.”

Torres said she hoped to send her brother’s body back to Mexico. She said she asked authorities to pay for his burial expenses from funds in his bank account.

Ullua’s father, Benito, broke into sobs Friday when speaking of his son.

“He was all I had, my only one. I lived for him,” said the 62-year-old Ullua, who works at a furniture factory in Anaheim. “All I can say is that he was my only son. Since childhood I gave him everything.”

The elder Ullua said he last saw his son Monday night, when the two of them watched “Tal Como Somos” on Channel 34 at about 10 pm.

“He told me he was going back to his house in Costa Mesa. I offered him to stay over for the night, but he said he had to go and would return in the morning. When he didn’t come back, I got a bad premonition and started looking for him.

“I looked all over and I couldn’t find him,” he said.

Ullua said his son worked at a Greek restaurant in Anaheim, and that he didn’t know too much about his personal life.

“I don’t know about his friends; I let him be and didn’t interfere. He had many friends, and I respected that. All I know is that he liked to go to dances. Now they say that he was involved in bad things, and I don’t know. All I can say is that my son was not a bad man.”

Ullua said that today he would seek a permit from the Mexican Consulate to take his son’s body back to Mexico for burial in the family’s home state of Michoacan.

“Tomorrow, I will start thinking about funeral arrangements,” Ullua said.