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Chris Bautista lived every parent's worst nightmare: His young son, Luke, died after an accident at home just a month after his 15th birthday.
Luke's older brother, C.J., likely saved his life by performing CPR when he found Luke lying on the floor, bleeding, said Bautista, 51, of Neptune. But he'd already suffered severe head trauma.
After about four days in the hospital, doctors delivered the dreaded news: Luke — the teenage drummer who loved Foo Fighters, the class clown who was always cracking jokes — had suffered brain death. And he wasn't coming back.
But the Bautista family, despite being savagely grief-stricken, determined that their son would not die in vain. They donated his heart, both kidneys, and his pancreas and liver, saving five different lives in the weeks after their son's heartbreaking death.