Accident Victim’s Kidney : Mission Viejo Coach Receives Transplant

A youthful Mission Viejo High School coach with failed kidneys and a weakening heart received a gift of life Thursday--a kidney from the body of a 14-year-old Irvine boy who was fatally injured when struck by a car this week while riding his bicycle to school.

The coach, 26-year-old Jeff Bergan, was in good condition in the intensive care ward of St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Los Angeles after the 2 1/2-hour operation performed Thursday morning by Dr. Thomas Bogaard, a hospital spokeswoman said.

“Dr. Bogaard said it looks very encouraging,” spokeswoman Nancy Miron said. “He is pleased with the way things went.”

The boy, David Leidal, was a freshman at University High School. His mother, Betty Leidal, requested that one of her son’s kidneys be given to Bergan after she read an article in The Times describing his plight, she said.

Bergan, who coaches both wrestling and football at Mission Viejo, helped coach the freshman football team in a game last week against University High School--where Leidal was a freshman lineman.

“I was sitting there (Wednesday) and the doctors were saying the EEG (electroencephalogram) is flat, there’s no sign,” Betty Leidal said. “I immediately thought to myself: This is so senseless, so tragic. David was so strong and healthy, and I thought maybe his organs could be used.” Leidal said that donating the kidney to Bergan “would be especially meaningful to David, because he worshipped coaches.”

In an interview last week, Bergan said his diseased kidneys and heart left him tired most of the time, and that he wanted the transplant done “pronto.”

“It’s a little morbid; I have to wait for someone to die,” he said. “But that’s what will happen.”

Bergan’s doctors said the kidney transplant may allow his heart to recover enough so that a heart transplant is not necessary.

As a memorial to David, University High’s freshman team dedicated Thursday’s game against Woodbridge High School to him. Ironically, the driver of the car that struck the boy is a senior at Woodbridge High. The youth’s father, George Leidal, his brother, Erik, and his uncle, David Chenault, who flew in from Houston after the accident, were at the game.

University High Coach Lad Salness said he asked his players before the game “to go out there and play like David would play,” recalling how hard his former lineman had always worked.

His teammates remembered him by scrawling his number--79--on the towels they wore tucked at their waists. Some wore his number on their football pants or socks.

University won the game, 40-0.

Mission Viejo High School dedicated its freshman game against Fountain Valley High to the memory of David Leidal, with a pregame prayer for Bergan, said Ann Dahlberg, a friend of the coach and booster club member at the school.

“Jeff remembered seeing him (David) play,” Dahlberg said. “He felt deep sorrow that this young man had to die, and he felt very sorry for the young man who was driving the car.”

The driver, Pejman Brian Alaghamandan, 17, and five other students were on their way to school in his Volkswagen “Bug” on Tuesday when he allegedly ran a stop sign at the intersection of Michelson Drive and Yale Avenue, slamming into Leidal, who was thrown 87 feet through the air, Irvine police said.

Investigation Continuing

Police are still investigating the accident, and it could be as long as two weeks before the case is handed over to the district attorney’s office, which will decide whether to file charges against Alaghamandan, Irvine Police Lt. Mike White said.

Sgt. Mike Ogden, who is in charge of the investigation, said that witnesses and physical evidence indicate that Alaghamandan did not stop at the intersection and could possibly face gross negligence or manslaughter charges.

The youth’s mother, Alasohrehalla Alaghamandan, said her son is “going through hell” because of the accident. She said the entire family feels sorry for the Leidals, but she also condemned the media for focusing attention on her son.

“Everyone is putting everything on the shoulder of my son. . . . He is not a killer, what happened was an accident,” said the mother, who works for a real estate office in Irvine. “He was going to school. . . . He was not drunk, or on drugs.”

Alasohrehalla Alaghamandan said that other witnesses to the accident have said that her son did, in fact, stop at the intersection.

“We are so confused,” she said. “I am scared for my son. . . . I haven’t gone through this before, and I don’t know what I have to do.”

Leidal’s mother said she understood what Alasohrehalla Alaghamandan was going through. “I am the mother of a 17-year-old who drives. . . . The horror of this will live with everyone who was in the car for the rest of their lives. . . . We would give anything to undo the mistake that he made.”

Leidal said two of the youths who were in the car that struck her son came by Western Medical Center in Santa Ana, thinking they would be able to visit him.

“When I told them that he was brain-dead, they broke down and cried,” Leidal said. “And they said the boy who was driving just couldn’t come, but was very, very sorry and they were there for him.”

Leidal’s other kidney, liver and corneas were also removed for transplant operations, said his mother, the director of foundation relations at UC Irvine.

While organ donors and their families may not choose the recipients, Bergan’s condition put him at the top of the list of patients needing a kidney. Leidal said officials at UCLA’s Regional Organ Procurement Agency told her no more than that a 26-year-old man had received her son’s kidney.

Family’s Statement

Through Ann Dahlberg, Jeff Bergan’s family issued this statement:

“One of the legacies that comes from participation in sports is the fellowship that goes with the sport. In this instance, Mrs. Leidal, out of love for her son, has found a way for that fellowship to continue. As Jeff touches the lives of other young athletes in the future, Mrs. Leidal’s son will also touch those athletes.”

A memorial fund has been established in David Leidal’s name at University High School, and a fund to help pay Jeff Bergan’s medical expenses has been set up at Mission Viejo High.

Services for David Leidal will be held at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at University United Methodist Church in Irvine, with burial at Pacific View Memorial Park in Newport Beach.