Organ donations and transplants hit an all-time high in 2023, according to New Mexico Donor Services. Still, over 640 New Mexicans are sitting on a waitlist hoping to find a match before it’s too late. Donor Services, along with recipients and waitlisters themselves are undertaking efforts to get more New Mexicans with organ failure life-saving transplants.
Renee Roybal of San Ildefonso Pueblo made it off the transplant waiting list in 2002, when she received a new heart.
“I am thankful I got life to live on again,” she said. “I was able to see my daughters graduate from high school, I saw them marry, I saw the birth of each of my grandchildren.”
One in five people on the waitlist in New Mexico are Native American, according to New Mexico Donor Services, the state’s nonprofit donor procurement organization. The community is overrepresented due to high rates of chronic conditions that can cause organ failure. At the same time, they’re less likely to find a match because fewer Native Americans register as donors and people with the same genetic background are more likely to have compatible blood types and tissue markers.
Donor Services said that a common spiritual belief of keeping the body intact for burial is one reason more Native people don’t donate their organs. Just days after her operation, Roybal found herself in a system that wasn’t built to respond to her cultural needs.
“My husband approached me and said, ‘You know, the men from the pueblo want you to return your heart to the pueblo,’” she said. “I’m like, ‘Oh, well, I gave permission to pathology to take it.’ And he said, ‘Well, we need to get it back.’”
She said hospital administrators told her that wasn’t possible, so she enlisted the help of a friend enrolled in law school.
“And I don’t know what he said but, the next day, pathology called me and they said, ‘Mrs. Roybal, where do you want your heart sent?’’ she told KUNM. “And I said, ‘To the Governor’s Office at San Ildefonso Pueblo’ and I gave them the address. ‘Will do. It’s done,’ [they said]. And that was it.”
Pueblo leaders buried her heart and, when she dies, she’ll be buried along with it.
Since her transplant, Roybal has worked to increase donations among tribal communities through outreach and education. She said younger people are generally more receptive.
“In the pueblo, there’s a lot of change — phones, you know, and stuff,” she said. “And to try to put it in balance with your Native traditions, your culture, that’s somewhat hard.”
She said, in some ways, organ donation is very much in line with Pueblo culture.
“Natives are a giving people. Pueblos, they open up their homes for the Feast Days, they invite people to come and eat, come on in,” she said. “I think, following those same lines, that they should really think about giving the gift, you know, organ donation. And I try to tell them that. To look at it that way.”
Celina Espinoza is the external affairs and business development director at New Mexico Donor Services. She said her team is working to make the process more accessible.
“Some tribes have ceremony that needs to be performed around death, and we’re able to learn what that is and help make it happen,” she said.
She said witnessing the impact of life-saving transplants can also help change people’s outlook.
“We have so many ambassadors that say, ‘Because I received, I’m now able to teach my granddaughters how to dance, I’m able to teach the language to my grandson,’” she said. “And we see so much of our culture dwindling in New Mexico that I think there’s a lot more willingness to embrace this idea.”
Since 2020, the number of Native Americans in New Mexico who’ve donated organs has doubled, according to the organization’s data. And last year, the state saw record donations and transplants more generally. Ninety-five people donated organs, leading to 241 transplants, up from about 160 in 2019.
Espinoza said the organization recognizes the decision is intensely personal and never pushes donor registrations. She credited relationship building and educational outreach for the uptick.
“Working with the ER and ICU nurses to know what the donation process looks like, setting clear expectations for families of how donation works, but [also] just reemphasizing the legacy you leave behind as an organ donor,” she said.
While speaking about record numbers, Espinoza was quick to note the organization sees each donor as an individual, not a number. They ask families to fill out cards with details and stories about their departed loved ones, who the organization calls “heroes.”
“That’s read before the transplant surgery happens so that the staff, the nurses, the doctors understand who that individual was as a human being and what gift they are giving,” she said.
And yet, despite these increased donations, Donor Services says New Mexicans still wait an average of five years for a kidney — two years longer than the national average. For some, that’s too long. Every day across the U.S., 17 people die while waiting for an organ, according to the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration. Epinoza advised those waiting to “be the advocate on the side for finding a living donor,” which she said was “their best way to be able to do something proactive.”
There may be no better example of making a lot of noise in search of a kidney donor than Albuquerque resident Scott Plunket, who had the Highland High School marching band play outside his house, yelling “give Scott a kidney!” A video of the performance is posted to his Youtube channel, SNAK Films, which stands for Scott Needs a Kidney.
He also has a logo, which features two figures lifting up a kidney bean, printed on hats and yard signs with QR codes that lead to his website. Plunket worked in film set decoration before kidney disease and dialysis made him too weak to continue.
“Given my background in film, and kind of being a goofball, I’ve done everything from animated shorts where we tell kidney jokes,” he said. “Other friends have helped me film stuff down at an improv club where we sort of make this joke that, ‘For this next game, all I need is a human kidney in good condition.’”
In his front yard, large red letters staked into the ground spell out “I need a kidney!”
Plunket is searching for a living donor through the National Kidney Registry, an option he didn’t know about at first.
“Up until then, I was just kind of waiting around — it sounds terrible — but for someone to pass away and for me to be lucky enough to receive their kidney,” he said.
He remains on the waitlist for a deceased donor, but said he would actually prefer a living one because research shows those recipients live longer.
And his creative outreach has gotten some traction. In addition to eight friends, three neighbors he didn’t know have offered to help.
“I was really really close with this one neighbor. She had gone through all of the testing. She basically had one more hurdle to go and, sure enough, a CT scan came back that meant that she couldn’t donate,” he said. “And she was so upset. She was like, ‘I never wanted to let you down.’ And I still haven’t met this person in-person.”
Two others are nearing the end of the process now.
“So, you know, fingers crossed one of them might work out,” he said.
And if one does, or if he gets pulled off the waitlist, he’ll join a community of organ recipients like Renee Roybal, who received the heart of an 11-year-old girl. She was told the transplant would afford her 1-5 more years of life but, 22 years later, she said her doctor calls her his “golden child.”
“And I said no. I’m not the golden child. The golden child is the person who gave me this heart,” she said. “And that’s what I believe. She is my golden child.”
