Liver donor's family, recipient unite online

Over the years, Trine's family tried to contact the DeLapp family. She knew the family lived in Kentucky, but says letters her mother sent to an address for Amanda's grandparents were returned, unopened.

Several years ago, Trine wrote a thank you note to the DeLapps for her transplant and gave it to the organ-procurement organization for Kentucky hoping they could pass it along to the family. The note never made it to them.

Meanwhile, she immersed herself in transplant-related endeavors.

"I very much feel that it's important and also I like to give back. I don't feel like I'm under an obligation. I want to give back," Trine said.

She first attended the U.S. Transplant Games in 1992, and has attended most of the games since then. She has participated in swimming, running and even signed up for the shot put this year.

She met her fiance, Ryan Labbe, in an online forum about organ transplants. He moved from New England to Miami to be with her, and received his own liver transplant earlier this year.

Trine has been off immunosuppressant medications for 11 years, something that's becoming more common among transplant recipients. She is applying for medical school, in hopes of studying something transplant-related, and works for the Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency in Florida.

On a Friday night at her office, around 6 p.m., her Blackberry went off. It was a friend request from her MySpace page.

It was from 23-year-old Keisha DeLapp.

"I almost fell off my chair," Trine says.

Alisha DeLapp, now 48, had gone on to have Keisha and a son before she and her husband divorced. She followed Trine's progress through online stories from the various U.S. Transplant Games she competed in over the years. She kept the picture of Trine as a child in her Christmas dress — eerily, it was the same dress Amanda had worn in a Christmas snapshot — and hoped one day to be able to update it with a more recent photo.

"I know it's not my daughter, but it's just as special knowing that my daughter saved her life," Alisha DeLapp said. "I'm proud of her, with the things that she's chosen to do with her life. It's so impressive to me."

The two families have been communicating via e-mail since Keisha and Trine made contact earlier this year. They've talked about the many years they tried to connect, and how thankful they are for each other — each in their own ways.

"I've waited 24 years to be able to say thank you," Trine says from her home in Florida.

When the transplant games commence on July 11, the three will meet for the first time in downtown Pittsburgh, just miles from where Trine's surgery took place. Starzl will also be there to greet them. The women will give thanks for each other through hellos and hugs, and probably some tears.

"I never got to know my sister. I never got to meet her or anything. By no means is Trine my sister, but that's kind of like a part of her," Keisha says. "This whole experience, I'm just glad that it happened."

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