Petaluma boy to be remembered at Rose Parade

Press Democrat | Chris Smith

While Trey Atkin was a learning to walk in Petaluma, his dad hoped he'd become “a good and kind person respected for those qualities” and, secondly, would make positive impacts on the world.

“We got No. 1, in spades,” Chip Atkin said Monday at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. He said his boy was a joy up to the day in 2000 when, at age 11, he was killed by a limb ripped from a tree by wind during a friend's birthday party.

As Trey lay mortally injured at Memorial following the accident, his parents made the anguished decision to donate his organs. His kidneys, liver and pancreas sustained the lives of four organ recipients and his corneas allowed a fifth to see.

More than a decade later, Trey's father and his mother, Marjorie Helm, are passionate advocates of organ donation. Chip Atkin said the gift of his son's organs and the way it has inspired others to register as donors is producing the impact “I hoped he'd have in his life.”

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