Finally, Life Is a Picnic for Recipients of Transplants : Medicine: Gathering is a celebration for people who received new hearts and lungs at UCLA Medical Center.

The picnic Sunday in a scenic park at UCLA had potato salad, volleyball games, pesky insects and plenty of people walking around with secondhand hearts.

The event was the annual outdoor get-together for patients from the heart and lung transplant program at UCLA Medical Center. About 100 recipients, family members, physicians and nurses joined in saluting the innovative procedure that has allowed gravely ill patients to resume near-normal lives.

“It’s almost like being reborn,” said Darryl Botten, 55, of Reseda, who received a new heart in February.

Botten, a former personnel manager, underwent his first bypass operation in 1978. In 1990, he suffered a heart attack while Christmas shopping. As he waited eight months for a heart to become available, he could not even finish planting a flower in a pot because the exertion caused chest pains.

Shortly after his surgery, Botten noticed that his face was warm and flushed for the first time in years. “The doctors said, ‘You have a heart now that’s pumping blood to places it hasn’t been to for a long time,’ ” he recalled.

UCLA physicians have performed almost 350 heart transplants since the program began in 1984. Today, only Columbia University’s medical center in New York performs more of these procedures annually, UCLA hospital officials said.

Hillel Laks, UCLA’s chief of cardiac surgery, said the transplant picnics give physicians a rare chance to view the long-term results of their work. “We’re used to seeing the transplant patients in the hospital,” he said. “To see them outdoors in a natural environment, enjoying life, is a wonderful feeling.”

Thanks to continuing refinements in follow-up drug therapy, transplant recipients are enjoying better health and greater longevity, Laks said.

“People are going back to school, back to work or are enjoying their retirement after transplant surgery,” said Rocky Minkley, a UCLA transplant nurse. “We even have a recipient who competes in skateboard races.”

Sergio Perez, 24, of Anaheim, worked up a sweat during a lively volleyball game at the picnic. Just three years after his transplant, he holds down a physically demanding furniture warehouse job. Before receiving the new heart, he said, “I couldn’t walk from here to that tree over there,” indicating a distance of about 10 feet.

At a nearby table, two picnickers from North Hollywood, Seymour Sutter, 67, and his wife Charlene, 64, boasted of their special distinction. He received a new heart in 1987, and she received a new liver two years later. “The nurses call us Mr. and Mrs. Transplant,” Charlene Sutter said.

One grim cloud hanging over the program, however, is the shortage of donor organs. UCLA has a waiting list of 60 people who need heart transplants and 16 who need lung transplants, Minkley said. Many transplant recipients do public speaking on the importance of organ donations or urge their friends and family members to sign a consent card.

John Wills, 58, of Burbank said he spent 105 agonizing days in the hospital, waiting for a heart. Five days after his operation last March, he was home.

“I almost set a new record for the longest stay, waiting for a new heart,” he said with a laugh. “Then I almost set a record for the shortest stay after a transplant.”

Like other recipients, Wills is eager to make the most of his restored health. “I know there’s a reason why I got a second chance,” he said. “I haven’t discovered it yet. But I’m looking.”