Annette Hernandez arrived at Parkland Memorial Hospital with a heavy heart, fearing the worst after her only son had been injured in a horrific car accident.

Hernandez found her son, Matthew “Cody” Corker, 22, in the intensive care unit, hooked up to tubes and wires. He didn’t respond to her voice or touch. In the anguish of the next 20 hours, Cody would be pronounced brain-dead, and his family would have to grapple with a gut-wrenching decision: whether to donate his organs in hopes of saving the lives of strangers. The choice was complicated by his family’s disbelief that nothing more could be done for him. The decision was not made easier by Corker’s own wishes.

“He told me that he wanted to donate his organs,” Hernandez recalled of a conversation she’d had earlier that year with her son. “I wanted to fulfill everything he wanted.” Surgeons ended up transplanting his heart, liver and left kidney.

Later, family and friends would meet the recipient of Corker’s heart – a 70-year-old Collin County man who let them put their heads to his chest and listen to its strong, rhythmic beat.
“I’m glad a part of Cody is still living,” Hernandez said. “Even in death, he was giving.”