BUENA PARK : Ailing Girl’s Pals, Town Pitch In

Noemi Serrano laughs and smiles, exuberant in her youth, optimistic even in the face of illness.

It is almost Christmas, she says, a time to be thankful for the family and the gift of life. But doctors say the 18-year-old Buena Park resident is in desperate need of a heart and lung transplant, and her friends have rallied around her in a drive to raise enough money to make sure that finances do not stand in her way.

Diagnosed as having pulmonary hypertension, Noemi first noticed the symptoms in 1987 while visiting relatives in Mexico City.

“I just couldn’t walk around and do things like everyone else. At first I thought that I was just lazy, and then I remembered that a few months before that I was getting really tired in physical education and when I walked to school,” she said.

Taken to a cardiologist in Mexico by her grandfather, she learned that there was a problem with her heart. Her family immediately returned to California and took her to UCI Medical Center in Orange, where doctors confirmed that her blood pressure was dangerously high and that she needed a heart and lung transplant.

Stanford University and UCLA will place Serrano on the waiting list for a suitable transplant if she can raise $25,000 toward the estimated $100,000 cost of the surgery. The remainder will be paid off in installments.

The Buena Park Firemen’s Assn. has started a trust fund in the amount of $5,000 and is urging residents to contribute.

Living in a modest home with her mother and father, the oldest of four brothers and two sisters, Serrano says her days consist of doing her home studies and watching television. Because of all the time she missed in school because of her illness, Serrano was unable to graduate with her class at Buena Park High School in June but hopes to finish in mid-December.

Noemi’s mother, Soledad, speaks no English but said through an interpreter that “the hardest part of the situation is when Noemi has to be hospitalized.” The latest hospitalization came earlier this week when her blood pressure dropped far below normal.

Friends drop by once in a while to visit, but Noemi notes that it is hard for them to see her ill.

“It seems so difficult that this should be happening to someone they know,” she said.

The first thing Noemi plans to do when she gets healthy again--and she has no doubt that she will--is to “go back to Mexico and finish that vacation.”

Donations can be made by sending checks payable to the Noemi Serrano Trust/BPFA, Buena Park Credit Union, 6650 Beach Blvd., Buena Park, Calif., 90620.--DEBORAH CARPENTIER