‘SUPERHERO’ DAD SAVED BY ‘ANGEL’
Got kidney from murdered girl, 4
For Bronx “super dad” Freddy Ramirez, getting a much-needed kidney should have been a celebration — but the jubilant news was cloaked in tragedy when he learned the lifesaving organ came from a young girl whose mother and teen boyfriend were charged in her death last month.
Ramirez, 43, father of an 8-yearold boy with autism, had been sick and undergoing intense dialysis treatments for over a year when he got the heart-stopping call that a kidney had been found for him.
But despite the transplant’s success, recovery has been bittersweet since the family learned the organ once belonged to Octavia Aquino, a 4-year-old Indiana girl who tragically died last month on Father’s Day.
Ramirez’ wife, Eileen IrizarryRamirez, 42, told The Post on Thursday she felt compelled to find the family of little Octavia, who allegedly suffered horrific abuse at the hands of her mother, 23-year-old Destiny Rhoades, and her mom’s 16-year-old boyfriend, Christian Gonzalez.
“My husband’s just really in shock. He’s grateful and he’s mourning right now,” IrizarryRamirez said.
“Nobody prepares you for that. Yes, you’re grateful, but the pain that family feels, I don’t know how to express it and I wasn’t prepared for it,” she added. “You’re feeling all those emotions with them even though you don’t know them.”
Getting the call that Ramirez had received a kidney, when the wait list can take years, was one shock for the family but learning that it had come from a child — when the doctors initially said it was from a young adult — was incredibly upsetting.
‘Overwhelmed’
“The doctors had told him, ‘We’re going to monitor you a little bit more closely because you ended up receiving a pediatric kidney,’ ” Irizarry-Ramirez said. “Obviously, we weren’t told this and he was very overwhelmed with emotion. He completely broke down and was crying.”
According to National Institutes of Health (NIH), pediatric kidneys can be successfully transplanted to adult recipients, usually with successful long-term results.
Police in Evansville said Octavia was found “cold to the touch,” with bruises and a bite mark on her body that Gonzalez, her mom’s boyfriend, admitted to being responsible for, according to a statement from June 17.
Gonzalez was charged as an adult in the girl’s murder, while Rhoades, her mother, was charged with neglect resulting in death, among other raps, police said.
“We were already asking our own family for prayers for the family of the young person who died, and then to find out it was a child, I feel it was really traumatic for [Ramirez],” his wife said.
Irizarry-Ramirez said she also felt an overwhelming urge to contact Octavia’s paternal grandmother to try and convey her gratitude — even knowing that she may not want to talk.
What she didn’t know was that the grandmother, Linda Alvarez, whose son was the child’s father, had been asking about the people who received Octavia’s organs, wanting to know if their surgeries had gone well.
“It’s just I needed her to know like, ‘I’m not sure if you know your granddaughter was my husband’s donor, but these are the specifics.’ And she said that on that specific day, she needed to hear from me, she needed a sign from her granddaughter,” IrizarryRamirez said about her conversation with Alvarez.
Parental concern
The couple’s reaction to learning where the kidney came from was in part because they’re loving parents to a young child themselves.
Despite his father’s sickness, Evan handled the surgery incredibly well and was telling everyone at school the following day how his “superhero” daddy was getting better, his mother said.
Irizarry-Ramirez and her husband hope that by sharing their story they can honor little Octavia and highlight the importance of organ donations.
“I believe Miss Octavia saved seven people,” she said. “Her kidneys, her heart, her lungs. She made such an impact in such a small amount of time and left a legacy, and we are always going to think of her.”