It’s the season of giving, and what better gift to give than time.
More time with friends and family, more time to experience the world, more time to live another year, another day.
The people at the health agency OneLegacy hope to share the idea of life-extending time with millions of people watching this year’s Rose Parade. The federal organ procurement organization that serves Orange County and much of Southern California (one of 40 such organizations around the country) is sponsoring its Donate Life float in the 2026 parade, as it has since 2004.
The hope is that the float, yet again, will boost life-extending organ donations.
“We’re kind of the bridge to life,” said Sarah Fahey, creative services and digital marketing coordinator for OneLegacy.
This year’s float — made from organic materials, seeds and flowers — will feature 20 transplant recipients who will ride and wave to the crowd. The float also will feature circular floral portraits (known as floragraphs) of deceased organ donors, along with four living donors who have given part of their body to people in need.
“It’s an incredible representation of what donation can do, and how different people can be involved,” Fahey said.
OneLegacy works closely with eight area transplant centers and 220 hospitals to quickly match recipients with viable organs from people who previously opted to be donors. The organization also works with living donors, who can help strangers, relatives or friends that might need a kidney or part of a liver.
The idea that organ donations might arise from a Rose Parade float — or other avenues for public outreach — isn’t far fetched.
Shey Rodriguez, an Ontario resident who works for the city of Placentia as a public safety dispatcher, said she began thinking about organ donation a few Christmases ago while binge watching the medical TV soap opera “Grey’s Anatomy.” When the main character (Meredith Grey) donated part of her liver to help someone stay alive, Rodriguez’ interest was piqued.
“Can people do that?,” the now 34-year-old asked herself. “Is that even a thing?”
After a quick search online, she learned about being a living donor. She then filled out a questionnaire with Keck Hospital of USC to join an inquiry list.
She didn’t know anyone who was sick or who needed a liver. She’d never stayed overnight in a hospital or even broken a bone. Yet, somehow, Rodriguez felt compelled to give away a piece of her liver, which she learned can regenerate.
“You know what, it will grow back,” she said. “So I decided to do it. I just wanted to make a difference in someone’s life.”
The pre-donation process — including bloodwork, exams and a liver biopsy — took about six months. Rodriguez was told that she could change her mind at any point and, she admitted, she was nervous. But she was mentally committed to the surgery, she said, and, in 2023, she underwent the procedure.
Rodriguez said she felt some post-surgery pain for a few weeks but, within six months, her liver was fully regenerated.
“It grows quick.”
Someone out there is walking around with a piece of her body, though Rodriguez still doesn’t know who that is. She said on the day of the surgery she received a thank-you card from the recipient, and was later told that the recipient was healing quickly.
“I just hope they get to experience life the way that I do,” Rodriguez said. “Do whatever they would want to do that their liver issue prevented them from doing.”
She recently got a first look at the float’s floral artwork, and said it will be an honor to walk alongside it during the Rose Parade.
“I think it’s a great way, and a big stage, to send the message that organ donation saves lives,” she said. “If we can get the message out, maybe there are people out there who don’t know that living donation is a thing,” she said.
The other organ that’s common for living donations is the kidney. Of the more than 100,000 people waiting for a transplant, about 90,000 are on the waitlist for a kidney.
See also: Rose Parade 2026 lineup: Your guide to every float, band and equestrian unit, in order
But there’s a shortage. OneLegacy’s Fahey said only about 50,000 kidney transplants are conducted each year because there aren’t enough donors to meet demand.
“You can donate a lobe of your liver and it will regenerate and the other person’s life can be saved. You can have a perfectly normal life with one kidney,” she said. “It is amazing to see the power of donation.”
Huntington Beach resident Shawn Kortes is on a decade-long wait list for a new kidney.
“There’s not a day that goes by when I don’t have to think about the fact that I’m slowly dying. I don’t know when, or how much longer, I have,” Kortes said.
While his son is already an older teenager and understands what his father is facing, Kortes worries more about his 7-year-old daughter, and what life without him would be like for her.
“That’s the tough part. Especially every day when I wake up and see my daughter and think about all the things she hasn’t experienced, and I haven’t been able to experience with her yet.
“That’s when things get tough for me, having to face the fact that I may not be around to see her graduate, or watch her get married, or achieve all those milestones that kids get to go do.”
Kortes learned that he had a genetic kidney disease while in nursing school. A high blood pressure reading in 2010 led to a a series of tests that pinpointed his kidney issues in 2010.
“Fortunately, for most people, it’s a pretty slow progression,” Kortes said of the cysts that multiply on the kidneys over time, eventually taking over the good tissue and reducing the kidney’s function.
For a time, he could maintain his kidney functionality. But about five years ago his numbers started to decline and, about a year ago, tests showed that he had less than 20% functionality — the threshold for being added to the transplant list.
Waiting isn’t easy. Each night, he undergoes a rigorous procedure, with a catheter connecting his abdomen to bags of liquid that, later, is flushed out through a dialysis machine.
“That’s how I clean the toxins out of my body (that) my kidneys can no longer keep up with,” he said.
“The biggest issue you have, it affects other systems of your body. There’s other complications that can arise in the process of doing this,” he said.
“The hope is to get a new kidney as quickly as possible and avoid other conditions that can make it worse.”
Making his situation more complicated is his that Kortes’ blood type, O-negative, is rare enough that it makes finding a match more challenging.
UC Irvine, his donation center, has a voucher program, meaning a living donor can contribute to a specific recipient who then can jump higher on the transplant list.
“That’s kind of the best-case scenario, to find someone who is willing to donate a kidney on my behalf and get me the voucher,” he said.
Even if people aren’t willing to give a piece of their body, getting tested to know if they can donate — if and when they want to — doesn’t cost anything, he noted.
“But there’s more people waiting (for organs) than there are getting tested,” he added.
“You can either be a donor or not, but the option is there. You can decide, ‘Hey I’m healthy enough to donate. Maybe it’s not a good time now but sometime in the future I’ll come across someone who needs a kidney.’”
Or maybe it’s a gift to give after you are gone. The most common donation option is to decide, while living, to be a donor upon death.
“One thing that is important during this season of giving, and year round, but especially around the season of giving, you can give the gift of life by registering to be a donor,” said Tania Llavaneras, a media relations specialist for OneLegacy.
“It’s a gift that costs you nothing right now; it doesn’t have a monetary value. But it is something that, when you’re no longer here, you can save lives.”