Special Ceremony Offered First Look to Local Honorees, Hospital Partners and Elected Officials

OneLegacy announced that 24 Southern California honorees will be recognized on the 2024 OneLegacy Donate Life Rose Parade^® float, themed “Woven Together: The Dance of Life.” Each honoree is personally touched by the power of organ, eye and tissue donation. At a special ceremony held last Thursday at Fiesta Parade Floats in Irwindale, Calif., OneLegacy welcomed hospital partners, elected officials, special guests and OneLegacy staff to join local float participants and their families as they provided a first look of the OneLegacy Donate Life float.

Representing our diverse communities and the importance of donation and transplantation, OneLegacy's float has intricately embraced different cultures, backgrounds and ethnicities over the past 20 years. The 2024 “Woven Together: The Dance of Life” float theme journeys to the Native American community. Following Native American traditions and protocols, the Gabrielino-Shoshone Tribal Council Vice Chair, Gabrielle Crowe, opened the ceremony with a moving invocation, accompanied with traditional Gabrielino flute melodies played by Jeremy Gonzalez from the Gabrielino-Shoshone Nation.

This invocation signaled the local Tribal Nation’s welcome to their ancestral land to the Hopi and five other Native American nations represented on the 2024 OneLegacy Donate Life float. The Woven Together: The Dance of Life float highlights the culture of the Hopi, native to the American Southwest, and will include six honorees who belong to the following Native American nations: Hopi, Pueblo de San Ildefonso, Navajo, Choctaw, Colville and Kickapoo.

The First Look ceremony included the participation of the 2024 Tournament of Roses President, Alex Aghajanian, as well as the 2024 Tournament of Roses’ Rose Court. Princess Olivia Bohanec and President Aghajanian shared moving stories of their personal experiences with organ donation and transplantation. Trejo Music signed artist, Coda, performed a heartfelt rendition of the song “We belong together” by Ritchie Valens.

“It was an honor to host this special event at Fiesta Parade floats to showcase our inspiring float and allow local participants and special guests to see it for the first time,” said Tom Mone, Chief External Affairs Officer of OneLegacy and OneLegacy Donate Life Float Chair. “We look forward to sharing our float on New Year’s Day; reminding us that all of our lives are indeed woven together… and no more meaningfully than between donors and those whose lives they save and heal… inspiring us to say ‘YES’ to organ, eye and tissue donation.”

The 2024 OneLegacy Donate Life float’s Southern California honorees, sponsored by OneLegacy, include:

2 living donors, who gave a second chance at life to others with their gifts:

• Celeste Rodriguez, living kidney donor and Mayor of the City of San Fernando
• Katie Becerra, living donor from Riverside

6 organ and tissue recipients, who received a second chance at life, thanks to their donors:

• Chloe Temtchine, double lung recipient from Los Angeles
• Jeff Newell, heart recipient from Los Angeles
• Joceline Perez Hernandez, tissue recipient from San Bernardino (co-sponsored with AATB – American Association of Tissue Banks)
• Malakai Carey, liver recipient from Los Angeles
• Raul Sansores, liver recipient from Los Angeles
• Somone Washington, kidney recipient from Los Angeles

16 organ, eye and tissue donors, who gave the gift of life after their death:

• Alanya Echols, tissue donor from Paramount, California
• Alexander Granados, organ and tissue donor from East Los Angeles
• Anthony Hidalgo, tissue donor from Lake Elsinore
• Cary Sauve-Brown, organ and tissue donor from Lake Elsinore
• Enrique Rivas, organ and tissue donor from San Fernando
• John Vargas, cornea donor from Baldwin Park
• Kali Geselowitz, organ donor from Coto de Caza
• Kerry Welsh, organ and tissue donor from Glendora
• Lance “Bo” Chavez, organ and tissue donor from Murrieta
• Mary Palmanteer, organ and tissue donor whose family lives in Torrance
• Miguel Cortes, organ and tissue donor from Moreno Valley
• Paul Eskildsen, organ and tissue donor from Coto de Caza
• Qyana Porter, organ and tissue donor from Victorville
• Rosanna Manriquez Gomez, organ and tissue donor from South Gate
• Scott Hultman, organ and tissue donor from Camarillo
• Vivian Beutel, organ and tissue donor from Santa Barbara

Three additional Southern California participants will be honored on the float, including Sadi’Jae Najera, an organ donor from Bakersfield, sponsored by JJ’s Legacy, and Raymond Jones, a kidney recipient from Los Angeles, sponsored by UCLA.

In addition to local donors and recipients, OneLegacy is honoring kidney recipient, national recording artist and activist, Freeway. In partnership with Gift of Life of Philadelphia, Freeway’s son, Jihad - who was an organ donor - will be honored with a floragraph.

OneLegacy is honoring Orlan Honyumptewa, a kidney recipient from the Hopi Nation who will ride on the float. Honyumptewa will be accompanied by ten additional members of the Hopi Tribe, who will perform the Hopi Butterfly Dance in front of the float during the 2024 Rose Parade^®.

Celebrating 21 years of participation in the iconic Rose Parade^® New Year’s Day celebrations, the OneLegacy Donate Life Rose Parade^® Float is the world’s most visible campaign to inspire organ, eye and tissue donation and to deliver the simple and powerful message that donation saves and heals lives. The success of this remarkable float is attributed to more than 30 generous sponsors, dedicated volunteers and inspiring advocates who are part of the donation and transplantation community.

To learn more about the OneLegacy Donate Life float, visit www.donatelifefloat.org

About OneLegacy

OneLegacy is the nonprofit organization dedicated to saving lives through organ, eye and tissue donation in seven counties in Southern California: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and Kern. It serves more than 200 hospitals, 11 transplant centers, a diverse population of 20 million donors and families across the region and waiting recipients across the country. Becoming an eye, organ or tissue donor is easy and can be done by registering online at www.onelegacy.org/register or by “checking YES” at your local DMV. For more information, visit OneLegacy.org

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