STOCKTON – It all started with one younger brother who desperately wanted to help his critically ill sister. He stepped up and it led to:

Little pink dots – 478 of them.

The potential of 3,824 lives saved through organ donations.

The potential of 23,900 lives impacted through tissue donations.

By:  The Stockton Record – Joe Goldeen

The seeds have been sown as thousands of Stockton residents have become aware that 105,000 people are on the national organ transplant waiting list – including 10,000 Northern California residents – and they have the knowledge to make an informed decision to do something about it.

During a presentation Thursday at San Joaquin Delta College, student Paul Amador, 25, of Stockton was recognized for his leadership role by the California Transplant Donor Network, the California Legislature and Congress.

Amador – the younger brother of Laura Amador, 27, whose life-threatening disease shut down her kidneys about five years ago while she was a senior at San Francisco State University – led the organizing effort at Delta to register 478 members of the college community with the state Department of Motor Vehicles, which in turn places a permanent pink “DONOR” dot on their driver’s licenses.

That pink dot signifies consent to having one’s organs (heart, liver, kidneys, lungs, pancreas and small intestine) and tissue (eyes, corneas, heart valves, bones and skin grafts) made available for transplantation upon death.

“Paul and Laura Amador have been able to teach about the need to give life,” Teresa Brown, president of the San Joaquin Delta Community College District Board of Trustees, said upon accepting two trophies from the California Transplant Donor Network. Delta registered the most donors during the network’s fall Campus Challenge campaign.

In fact, Delta College students registered more than one-third of all donors registered during the campaign conducted on 11 college and university campuses across the state, according to Sandy Andrada with the California Transplant Donor Network.

Brown credited Paul Amador with going a step beyond donating a kidney as part of a transplant donor chain that provided a lifesaving organ for his sister.

“If it ended there, it would be a wonderful story, but it doesn’t end there. Paul started a program at Delta College (Dance for Donors) and for this reason, Delta is going to get a trophy that doesn’t come through the athletic department,” Brown said.

From the day she learned about the Amadors’ involvement in spawning a nationwide kidney donation chain saving 14 lives and involving 28 surgeries to their campus effort registering students, faculty and staff as potential donors, she has been “just astounded” with their accomplishments.

Paul Amador gave much of the credit to a group of student volunteers.

“The students heard our story and asked what they could do. I told them to become an organ donor and spread the word. Since then, we’ve educated thousands of students about making an informed decision about organ donation,” he said.

“My sister is a living example of a life saved,” he said, smiling and pointing to a healthy Laura Amador, who works as a program coordinator for the Stockton Boys & Girls Club and intends to pursue her master’s degree in psychology.

Contact reporter Joe Goldeen at (209) 546-8278 or jgoldeen@recordnet.com.