Organ donations are Utahn's quest

MAPLETON — The irony is difficult to miss. After dedicating nearly five years of his life to the cause of organ donation, after begging and pleading — once on hands and knees — with administrators, legislators and business leaders on behalf of organ donation and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money, David Nemelka has been forced to quit because of his own health problems — the kind that organ transplants won't help.

The 67-year-old Nemelka has helped save lives. Through the considerable force of his personality — not to mention his deep pockets — he has helped to place Utah among the national leaders in organ donation.

Spurred by the deaths of extended family members and a neighbor who needed a new heart, he started the Gift for the Quest of Life Foundation, hired a couple of business executives — Lisa Hawthorne and Jeannene Barham, who is his sister — to do much of the actual legwork and proceeded to pushing for improvements in the organ donor system.

"David really was a catalyst behind a lot of stuff to move things forward and faster than we would have," says Tracy Schmidt, president of Intermountain Donor Services, the organ and tissue recovery agency for Utah, which runs the Utah Donor Registry and public education programs. "No question more people became donors because of the energy and initiatives he got going. Utah was on the cutting edge."

Here's what Utah has accomplished in recent years:

• Implemented one of the country's first integrated online donor registries.

• Created among the first legislation in the country that ensures donor registration will be legally binding at the time of death, thus removing the burden of decision from family members.

• Implemented one of the country's first "Good Samaritan" living-donor programs.

• Made Utah one of the first states to organize workplace organ donation programs which, among other things, encourages private business to grant paid leave to those who need time off from work to make living organ donations.

• Helped with the nation's first organ donor monument, which is located by the Salt Lake City Library in honor of those who have donated organs.

"In a short period of time, they did more than we could accomplish in many years without their help," says Joan Arata, manager of the transplant department at LDS Hospital.