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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.