POCATELLO — A local mother and her family recently connected with the man who received her son’s heart after he died in a car crash in 2021.

Just two days before Christmas the unthinkable happened when 15-year-old Jorden Breen was involved in a head-on collision with a semi-truck on Highway 30 in Idaho in December 2021.

Jorden was transported to Portneuf Medical Center and later to Primary Children’s Hospital in Utah where his parents received the news that there was little chance of his survival.

The young boy passed on Christmas day but not before he donated a total of five organs that all provided a Christmas miracle to their lucky recipients.

“We had decided that since Jordan wanted to be an organ donor, and us as parents also wanted to keep him going in life, to donate his organs,” said Jorden’s mother Amanda Christian. “He donated both of his kidneys, his heart, his pancreas and his liver. A total of five people benefitted from his donation because his liver was split in two.”

A couple of months after the donation, Christian sent letters out to all the organ donor recipients but only heard back from one, the man who was the recipient of his heart, Daryl Armstrong who lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

They chatted through the organization Donor Connect but the information exchange was slow moving. Deciding to put things into her own hands, Christian sent a letter to Armstrong at the beginning of this year with all of her information and her desire to hear from him further.

“One night when I was cooking dinner, I was having a really hard time,” Christian said. “I looked up and I said, ‘Jorden, I don’t know if I can do this anymore. I’m not gonna lie. I’m really having a hard time, you need (to give me) a sign.’ It was about a minute later that I got my very first text message from (Armstrong).”

Both Christian and Armstrong chatted back and forth for a while before Armstrong and the Donor Connect in New Mexico wanted to facilitate a meetup. The organization paid for the Christian family’s flight and hotel and then flew them out to Albuquerque in early October to meet face to face with the man whose life they had changed thanks to the donation of a heart.

“I was extremely excited to meet up in October,” Christian said. “It was a blessing, honestly. It’s hard to explain but it makes the grieving a little bit easier — to know that the person who got a blessing from your loss is doing well.”

Christian continued, “When we got off the plane in Albuquerque, they asked Angela and Daryl, Angela is Daryl’s wife, to pick us up from the airport. This was the first time we’ve met face to face. I know we’ve had phone calls, we’ve been texting, but we went up, we gave them a hug and it felt like I had known them for forever. It didn’t feel like it was somebody I was meeting for the first time.”

Both families met at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta and during a somber moment the Christian family put a stethoscope to Armstrong’s chest so they could hear Jorden’s heart beating strongly from within him.

“I spent almost a week with Daryl and I can tell you that it just felt like Jordan was there, which made that grieving easier,” Christian said. “We’re already planning on my daughter to go visit for the summer for a week by herself and I’m okay with that. She really took to Daryl very fast and very easily and she was struggling. She’s been struggling for a long time with the loss of her brother and her best friend. I believe meeting Daryl for her was a huge release, that he still goes on in some sense.”

The family is planning on meeting Armstrong in Salt Lake City sometime this month for his official three-year checkup and the family is hoping to continue to keep in contact for the foreseeable future.

“One of the main things I want people to know is be a donor,” Christian said. “Because he was declared dead on Christmas Day, we gained a Christmas angel, but five people got a Christmas miracle. Be a donor and if you have become a recipient of a donation, reach out to the donor family. I know not everybody wants that, but sometimes it’s nice to just know how you’re doing even its just a quick letter to say I’m doing good and I am thankful for the gift that I’ve received, something along those lines, because I would still love to know how the other four people are doing.”