Sister Gives Kidney to Brother, a Fellow Officer

Cora Mungia always thought it was terrifying enough being the mother of two Los Angeles police officers working in two of the city’s toughest neighborhoods.

Then, last Friday, she watched as her only daughter, Melissa, 28, and her only son, John James, 32, were wheeled into operating rooms at USC University Hospital.

Melissa gave her sibling and fellow officer the ultimate in police backup: one of her kidneys.

The operation was a success. On Wednesday, three generations of the Mungia family, flanked by a dozen officers from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollenbeck Division, gathered at the hospital to bring John James home.

After a grueling, eight-hour operation, Melissa was released Monday and is recovering with help from her son Shade, 6, who has learned to maneuver his mother’s wheelchair.

She expects to return to duty in the Rampart Division in January. Her brother plans to go back to the Hollenbeck Division in March, once doctors are sure that his body will not reject the transplanted kidney. In the meantime, he will shop for his sister’s Christmas presents. “But nothing could top this,” he said.

John Mungia, the officers’ father, who is a 27-year veteran of the LAPD, said it was the happiest day of his life--happier, even, than the day his two children told him they were following him into police work.

“She’s an angel from God,” the homicide detective said of his daughter, who alternated between clutching her stomach in pain and smiling, crying, and hugging her son and her older brother.

Mungia’s kidneys’ failed in November, but because of a nationwide shortage of organs, the wait for a kidney transplant would have been at least three years.

When tests showed that the two siblings shared five of the six commonalities needed for a transplant, Melissa said she never hesitated.

By her actions, she said, she hopes she has taught her son, and her daughter, Ryann, 7 months, “the importance of family.”

And she believes she’s taught her older brother a lesson too. When they were children, she said, he wasn’t very good at sharing his treats.

“But I’m sure he will be now,” she said.