Whittier Daily News | Ben Baeder
PASADENA - In Wooster, Ohio, college administrator Patrice Smith is living with only one kidney.
Two-thousand-three-hundred miles away, a 26-year-old woman and her family are still trying to figure out why a complete stranger would give away an organ.
"Who does that for people you don't even know?" said Karol Franks, whose daughter, Jenna, received the kidney after her's were destroyed by a rare bladder disease.
"Just talking about it right now, I'm going to start crying again," Franks said.
She was one of hundreds of people involved in this year's Donate Life Rose Parade float. Since 2004, a coalition of organ donation advocacy groups has entered a float in the Rose Parade to remind people about organ donations.
In all, the float will feature images of 72 donors and will have 28 riders who have received organs or tissue. Many of the images, called floragraphs, are meticulously filled in by family members, who use seeds and leaves to bring the images to life.
Pictured on this year's float will be Jose Alfredo Carrillo of El Monte, whose tissue went to about 50 people.
About 112,000 people in the United States are waiting for organ donations, and the needs are especially acute among Latinos, according to statistics from Donate Life.
Read more:Rose Parade float bring solace, community to families of those who donated organs - Whittier Daily Newshttp://www.whittierdailynews.com/news/ci_19650543#ixzz1i84Cx5hg

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