GREENSBURG, Pa. — In August, Cassidy Gamble got the phone call from her dad’s girlfriend she didn’t want to receive.
“There were paramedics there, and they were doing CPR,” Gamble recalled.
Her dad, James Forish, passed away on August 1. Gamble described him as hardworking, kind, and generous.
“My dad was always a giving person,” Gamble told Channel 11′s Andrew Havranek. “He was always trying to help anybody wherever he could.”
That generosity continued even after his death — thanks to a change made by Coroner Tim Carson.
When Carson took office three years ago, if someone died in Westmoreland County outside of a hospital setting, there wouldn’t be a referral to an organ recovery center — like CORE. But now, there is.
“For me, it was a no brainer,” Carson said.
So far this year the coroner said there have been 53 referrals from his office to CORE, with 14 becoming tissue donors. Forish was one of them.
One tissue donor could help as many as 75 people with different transplant needs.
“Burn victims for an example, we can get the skin and do skin grafts, tendons for people who need help getting moving or have issues with their legs and arms, heart valves, that’s been a big thing, and cornea transplants with the eyes that’s been a big part of what we’ve found out we’ve been able to help people.”
CORE said in the last two years, they’ve been able to help more than 1,000 people in need of tissue transplants thanks to donors who passed away outside of a hospital here in Westmoreland County.
Gamble said she hasn’t been able to meet anyone who has benefitted from her dad’s donations yet, but she’s looking forward to that day.
“His legacy gets to continue, his journey gets to continue, and his story didn’t have to stop there on that day,” she said. “It kind of was like the light at the end of the tunnel, like this was the worst thing that could have happened to me, but we could make something good out of it.”
If you’d like to register to become a tissue and organ donor, you can go to registerme.org/bethegift
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