Parents of Baby With Half a Heart See Some Hope Through the Tears

Sometimes it takes the frailty of the human heart to show the strength of the human spirit.

Jasmine Torres was living proof of that Wednesday in Hollywood as she lay in a plastic bassinet, surrounded by teddy bears and toys, blinking respiratory monitors--and love.

“Jasmine’s No. 1,” said her mother, Eileen Rios.

“No. 1,” nodded her father, Michael Torres.

Just 23 days old, the baby from Pico Rivera had climbed Wednesday to the top of the heart transplant list for Southern California.

It was a major plateau for a tiny infant with half a heart. Especially when there are 201 others in the Los Angeles area and 3,829 nationwide waiting for heart transplants.

Jasmine was born July 14 in Bellflower. Within hours, doctors noticed she wasn’t eating correctly. Tests showed she was suffering from hypoplastic left heart syndrome.

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It’s a birth defect that shows up in one in 7,000 newborns, the doctors explained. It leads to an undeveloped heart chamber that fails to pump adequate amounts of blood to the infant’s organs.

Sometimes it can be corrected through a series of operations. More often it is something that only a heart transplant can remedy, Rios and Torres were told.

But their own hearts sank when the doctors explained that while there is an 85% success rate for infant heart transplants, one out of every five babies waiting for one dies before a new heart can be found.

“We couldn’t believe it. Our baby looked perfect,” said Torres, a 28-year-old copy department worker for a Century City law firm.

“We were devastated. But there was no question what we would do,” said Rios, 25, a data-entry clerk for a Vernon picture framing company. “We would give our baby the best chance at life. We would have a transplant.”

The young couple’s lives were only starting to get complicated.

While they were at the hospital, thieves stole Rios’ car and wrecked it.

Doctors in Bellflower transferred Jasmine to Kaiser Permanente’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in distant Hollywood. Specialists there informed the couple that the transplant would be performed at Loma Linda University Medical Center in San Bernardino County. The baby’s lengthy recovery period would probably require them to move there.

But then the human spirit reached out to the tiny broken heart.

Social workers at Kaiser Permanente took the couple aside to assure them that Rios’ medical coverage would pay for the heart transplant. They took pains to assure the pair that Jasmine’s medical condition was not the fault of anything they had done.

Rios’ mother, Susie Robledo of El Sereno, quit her job at a department store distribution center to be a full-time baby sitter for Rios’ 4-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, Breanna. That cleared the way for Rios--on leave from her job--to spend as much time as necessary at the hospital.

Rios’ sister, Brandy Chacon, made room for her to stay at her own El Sereno home so Rios could easily commute each day to the Hollywood hospital. Chacon changed her daily routine so she could clean Rios’ Pico Rivera house and do the laundry.

At Torres’ Century City office, meantime, administrative workers Gary Maxwell, Laura Henry, Arthur Cerda and Ernie Casas passed the hat at the law firm of Irell & Manella and raised $3,000 for a new car for the couple.

Officials of the firm assured Torres he could commute to work by train and bus from Loma Linda and they would subsidize the rail and bus fare.

Whittier salesman Ernie Rios, Eileen Rios’ ex-husband, told the couple not to worry about how their relocation to Loma Linda might affect his relationship with young Breanna. “He told us that moving should be the least of your problems,” said Torres.

At Kaiser Permanente, Dr. Timothy Degner and shifts of pediatric nurses took the young couple under their wing as they watched the pair at Jasmine’s side. Rios came during the day. Torres joined her evenings after work.

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“I sit and read and talk to Jasmine. I know she hears me,” Rios said. “The nurses come and hug me when they see me crying. They’ve seen babies like this before. They know what mothers go through.”

The nurses rejoiced with the couple when officials at Loma Linda told them three weeks ago that Jasmine was No. 4 on the heart transplant list. She was boosted to No. 3 last week. She was No. 1 on Wednesday.

The list is maintained by a Richmond, Va., computer operated by the national United Network for Organ Sharing. It prioritizes heart transplant requests on the basis of patients’ medical condition, network spokesman Joel Newman said.

Two organ procurement services handle the Los Angeles area. Patients at the top of the list receive the next donated heart that is the right size and right blood type, said Gary Cottongim, executive director of one of them, the Westwood-based Regional Organ Procurement Agency.

Torres said officials have warned that infant hearts are often hard to come by and their child may have to survive months before a transplant takes place. He said he and Rios are fully aware that another baby must die if theirs is to live.

“We don’t know what will happen. We just want to give our baby a second chance,” he said.

Because Jasmine has always been No. 1 with them.