Partnership aims to promote organ donation

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OGDEN -- Leavitt's Mortuary is starting a push to promote organ and tissue donation because Mike Leavitt, president and director, doesn't want other parents to have to go through what he did.

His daughter, Crystal Lynn Leavitt Holt, died two years ago on a family cruise. Her death was from a reaction to medication, not lack of a transplant, but Leavitt doesn't care about that.

"No parent should have to go through having a child die," he said, and if organ transplants can save lives of children, he's for them.

So, Leavitt said Friday, Leavitt's' Mortuary is going to spend $100,000 in a major push to promote tissue and organ donation.

TV ads featuring Leavitt discussing donations will begin Jan. 7. With Leavitt are half a dozen children, all of whom have received life-saving organ transplants.

Since the phone number on the ads will be at the mortuary, Leavitt held a training Friday to teach his employees how to deal with the calls.

He will also be mailing fliers that are really brochures from Intermountain Donor Services.

That is the agency that collects donor organs and tissues and coordinates their use throughout the state.

Alex McDonald, director of public education for Intermountain Donor Services, said there are currently about 275 people in Utah waiting for an organ.

About 150 of those are kidney patients, he said. The others are waiting for a heart, lung, liver, pancreas or other organs.

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