"I remember telling a couple of people here in the office, and that I didn't know when I would be back," he said.

He called his parents in Denver and they immediately caught a flight in. He also called Lisa's parents in Oklahoma and they arrived the next morning

"I was nervous," Lisa said of the 90-mile drive to Salt Lake. "Once we hit Farmington we hit a traffic jam."

She nervously called the nurses at the hospital and they reassured them everything was still fine.

THE OPERATION: It was 11 p.m. as the nurses wheeled him into the operating room.

"It scared me to death thinking those kids could grow up without their dad," he said. "There was nothing I could do. I tried to instill in them some of the things my father taught me, but they're young."

" . . . Who was going to play catch with them? Who was going to teach them to respect people. It was a worry."

At the time, Bradley was seven and Cole was four.

Lisa, his wife of 14 years, recalls that day quite vividly.

"I remember him going down the hallway and thinking it might literally be the last time I see him again," she said. "I didn't want to cry and act like that in front of him. You try to act brave, but you're falling apart."

Strauss had complete confidence in his surgeon, Dr. LeGrand Belnap.

"Everyone I talked to said this was the guy you want doing it," he said. "I had faith that everything would work out."

Strauss' father, Mel, kept meticulous records of all of Mike's blood tests over the years, and it proved to be a huge help for the doctors to have such an accurate account of his medical history.

"Everything went absolutely perfect," Strauss said. "The liver has worked wonderfully. I never knew how sick I was until I got well and was able to do things. I didn't have as much fatigue. I felt better. I looked better. Everything was better."

He stayed in the hospital for 12 days before being released. He was told to stay near the hospital for the next two weeks so he stayed in a hotel.

THE DONOR: Strauss doesn't know much about the woman. He thinks she is from Salt Lake, but he isn't sure. He does know she donated her heart and kidneys also. He shutters at the thought that someone had to die so he could live.

"I don't get choked up very much, and I'm not serious very much except when I talk about this," Strauss said. "I don't know if I could say anything (to her). I would probably just hug her. I don't know what you say to someone."

Naturally, he's a proponent of organ donations. He would be one in a second if he could.