POCATELLO — During the past two years, every patient who could have donated an organ at Portneuf Medical Center has. That 100 percent consent rate earned PMC the Silver Medal of Honor from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Health Resources and Services Administration. 

“That just does not happen,” said Tracy Schmidt, Executive Director of Intermountain Donor Services on Wednesday as he presented PMC staff with the award.

During the past two years at PMC, 11 families have agonized over donating their loved one’s organs. Every single family at PMC has consented. The organs went on to save the lives of 32 different people, according to Woody Marshall, Intermountain Donor Service’s Manager of Hospital Services. 

Sarah Brown was one of those people saved by an organ donor, although she might never know who gave her a new heart. 

“I’m still speechless at the thought,” Brown said “I just hope to live the rest of my life in a way that shows gratitude for that gift.”

The Century High School graduate turned a sickly blue shortly after she was born. With a diagnosis of four different congenital heart defects, her journey toward a heart transplant began. 

Brown’s heart had not formed correctly. The two main arteries leaving her heart were switched — one growing where the other was supposed to be. She had no left ventricle. Her pulmonary valve didn’t work properly. 

A cocktail of steroids and a slew of surgeries kept an often-lethargic Brown alive into her teen years. But 

upon graduation from high school the Pocatello teen knew, she needed a new heart. She joined a list of more than 120,000 people nationwide who need an organ to live. 

Eighteen of these people die daily waiting for an organ, according to the National Foundation for Transplants. 

Brown was a lucky one. After four months of being on the transplant list, she got what she now calls “her angel heart.”

“That was just amazing,” Brown said. 

Brown received a heart transplant at Primary Children’s Hospital in May of 2013. 

Organ donation is a complex process, Marshall said. Fewer than 1 percent of people who land in intensive care units could end up being suitable organ donors. 

“All of these various things have to be in line,” Marshall said. “There has to be circulation. The timing is very important.”

When a patient at PMC is certified by two independent doctors as brain dead, hospital staff then contact Intermountain Donor Services, which is based in Salt Lake City. Day or night, this team then charters a jet or immediately gets into a car and drives the two-plus hours to Pocatello to handle the organ donation process.

“We are then there for the families,” said Amy Hemsley, PMC’s Director of Critical Care Services. 

While organs can be harvested for donations at PMC, the closest hospital where someone can receive an organ is Salt lake City. 

At that point, where the organs go and who they come from is information kept secret. 

“Until both families agree to meet, that information is confidential,” Marshall said, adding that there is no possible way to know which recent deaths at PMC contributed organs. 

“I have thought about whether or not I am ready to know about the donor,” Brown said. “But I know it’s not going to be a happy story. Someone had to die that was in my age group and in my category. A person with what I needed doesn’t just die. It could have been a high school student. It could have been a newlywed.”

Hemsley has seen the type of person who can donate organs lying in the intensive care unit. Seeing Brown at the awards ceremony brought tears to many of the nurses’ eyes.

“We see the hard part of it,” Hemsley said. “We don’t get to see the outcome so this is special. … This award just validates what we do. I had someone say to me today, ‘This is why I do what I do.’”

Brown, who can now run, jump and play, is planning on attending LDS Business College in Salt Lake City next semester — just miles away from where she received her second chance at life. 

This is the second time PMC has received the award, ranking it alongside 252 other hospitals across the country. To be considered for the award, more than 75 percent of families who are asked must agree to donate their family member’s organs at the hospital.