Eagle Rocker on Dialysis Helps Decorate Rose Parade Float

Every time Norma Araos volunteers to give Christmas presents to children waiting for organ or tissue transplants in hospitals across Los Angeles, she feels heartbroken.

“They’re so innocent—they just smile,” says Araos, adding: “They don’t know the difference between living healthily and not healthily.”

It’s a painful distinction that Araos, 45, knows only too well. She lost both her kidneys six years ago and has been on dialysis ever since. “We are 112,000 people nationally waiting for a kidney transplant and we die 18 a day—babies and adults,” she says, adding ungrammatically: “In a lot of people, we don’t make it.”

What a Difference a Day Makes

Araos, who works as a community educator about organ donations and transplants, has lived on Fair Park Avenue, near the corner of Eagle Rock Boulevard, for the past 15 years. For her, every day is a blessing that brings her closer to the time when she can expect to receive a donated kidney.

On Tuesday, Araos joined some three-dozen volunteers as well as a kidney donor and heart transplant recipient on an annual project designed to honor organ donors and remind people of the preciousness of time.

Called “Donate Life,” the project is part of the 2012 Rose Parade—and Araos is part of a large and expanding network of volunteers and families of organ donors as well as recipients associated with one of the most elaborate parade floats that an estimated 47 million viewers will see on display at the Pasadena Tournament of Roses on Jan. 1, 2012.

The float is currently being decorated in an area alongside Pasadena’s Seco Street, opposite the Rose Bowl. (The decoration activities are not open to the general public, although volunteers can get a glimpse after three hours of volunteering to do assorted tasks at the gigantic pavilion run by the Phoenix Decorating Company.

'One More Day'

This will be Donate Life’s ninth Rose Parade. Its theme: “One More Day”—meant as a somewhat cryptic reminder that “just as every day counts, so does every donation opportunity,” to quote from the organization’s press material.

It adds: “Donate Life hopes that anyone who has not yet registered will be inspired by Donate Life’s float to join the 100 million Americans who have checked ‘Yes’ for donation when applying for or renewing their driver’s license or identification card.”

Inspired by floral clocks and clock towers from the world over, the Donate Life float will carry 28 float riders, aged 17 to 67 years, representing organ recipients as well as donors, both alive and deceased.

Rising above them will be six giant floral clocks adorned with 72 memorial “floragraphs”—or floral portraits of deceased donors from 31 states as well as Canada, Japan and Taiwan.

Family members at special events in their hometowns have created many of the portraits. One of the portraits will feature Stella Espino, whose untimely death in 2010 was crucial in saving eight lives—and helped 85 others. Her husband Juan, an American Airlines employee in Ft. Worth, TX, will ride the float at the parade on Sunday.

The float will also display a rose dedication garden in honor of 3,000 people worldwide. Roses in the garden will bear a vial containing a personal message of love and remembrance from loved ones. And, in a symbolic tribute to departed donors, the hands of the garden clock will turn not forward but backward in time.

More information about the Donate Life Rose Parade Float can be found on www.donatelifefloat.org