Avriel Price’s twin sister Kayla Price stands with Avriel’s heart recipient Kristie Halsey to show the floragraph made in her honor. The floragraph was created by Gabriel and Raquel Gonzalez, who lost their own daughter, through Donor Network West.
A donor walk ceremony after a Gardnerville woman died in a hospital resulted in an “overwhelming” number of roses laid upon Avriel Price’s body from staff and strangers, her mother said.
“By the time we walked by her room, we couldn’t see her face because the roses were piled up,” mother Susan Price said. “The nursing staff called it ‘epic.’ … I’d never seen that many people.”
Price had chosen to be an organ donor, and her gift saved the lives of five others in need. For this act, she has been honored with a floragraph made out of organic materials that will be displayed on the 2025 OneLegacy Donate Life float Jan. 1 during the 136th Rose Parade in Pasadena, Calif.
Price, 34, died Dec. 28, 2022, due to a medical error in which she had been administered an incorrect medication during a hospital visit for a scheduled Caesarean section, her family website teamavriel.com shares. The post honors Price’s legacy and creates awareness of “complex” and “nuanced” repercussions in the health care industry, Susan said.
The Price family already made choices to become organ and blood donors but never spoke openly about them before Price died. Local organ procurement nonprofit Donor Network West serves about 13 million people between Nevada and California, also focuses on Douglas County along with Carson City, Churchill, Humboldt, Mineral and Washoe counties.
One of the five recipients to be contacted through Donor Network West was Kristie Halsey of Los Angeles, Calif.
Halsey received Price’s heart with a 97 percent match in antibodies. She first experienced a spontaneous coronary artery dissection after she gave birth to her third child, Tennessee, in May 2016. She dismissed blurred vision as natural aging, went to physical therapy for pain symptoms and spent two months in the intensive care unit at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Halsey was treated on two life support machines, received blood transfusions and had five stents inserted. She said it became expected she would need a heart transplant and then received an internal defibrillator.
“I went into denial for Christmas … and then I got the call 18 days later, and my daughter was standing with me, and I couldn’t comprehend what the nice lady was telling me,” Halsey said.
She had to accept officially that she would receive a heart donation but it also meant admitting she truly was ill, she said.
“All those things came together, and I thought, this is something I have to do to stay,” Halsey said. “…And when I met Susan last year around this time, I got to see the donor walk, we didn’t know anything about it — I don’t know, maybe it makes the whole thing dramatic — but I loved seeing it and it stayed with me.”
Price’s daughter is remembered for being outgoing and humorous among her friends and twin sister Kayla, Price said.
“She was outgoing and had a big personality,” she said. “We want people to remember her as selfless.”
Few families who have a loved one who provided a life-saving organ donation ever meet a transplant recipient, Price said, since a match is anonymous. But Price wrote letters to Donor Network West and Halsey without knowing her name, and the organization made the introduction. Price and Halsey decided to meet and made an instant connection. For Price, she now has the hope that Avriel’s recipients can enjoy longer, healthier lives from her donations, she said.
“We hit it off as if we’ve known each other forever,” Price said of Halsey. “We carried on and went out to dinner and we were so comfortable, and Kayla said, ‘Can I ask you a question? We brought a stethoscope. Can we listen to your heart?’ ”
The floragraph to be displayed during the Rose Parade was designed by Gabriel and Raquel Gonzalez, who lost a daughter who donated in 2008, Price said. Donor Network West chose the couple to design Avriel’s floragraph, which was unveiled on Dec. 10 at Jacob’s Berry Farm in Gardnerville with several speakers. Another of Avriel’s recipients also came to celebrate the unveiling, Susan said.
“It was a beautiful event,” she said.
Halsey, 50, said she feels like a part of the Price family thanks to the special gift.
“If anything was transferred to me, it was her sense of humor,” she said. “I thought I had a good sense of humor, but she had a better sense of humor. … You retain the essence of a donor, and I’m grateful for that.”
