Donor Network drives home donated organs with lack of airline flights

Staff members from the Iowa Donor Network are home now after a whirlwind roadtrip to the East Coast last week carrying precious cargo. With all airplanes grounded, the team had to deliver life-saving heart valves and skin donations from Iowa City to Virginia Beach, Virginia.Julie Jorgensen, the Donor Network’s development manager, says they didn’t want the items to go to waste, so they drove the Iowa-to-Virginia trip in about 20 hours. That included a stop in Kentucky to pick up a fifth cooler containing another salvaged heart.Jorgensen says the heart valves and tissue likely are -not- going to be used for anyone injured in last week’s terrorist attacks, but they’ll be used by other patients who desperately need them.Jorgensen was joined on the trip by two Iowa Donor Network staff members and her father, Tom Jorgensen, a retired Ames teacher who had a liver transplant 12 years ago. The four covered about 22-hundred miles in the last several days.