Ice skater awaiting second heart transplant

News Sentinel | Jennifer L Boen


Photo: In a 2009 visit to figure skater Michelle Kwan's rink in Los Angeles, Leah Smith, left, got some coaching help from Kwan. Smith is awaiting her second heart transplant. Kwan has sent recent texts to Smith, wishing her well. (Courtesy photo)

Leah Smith has had to give up skating, but hopes to return to the ice after surgery
Columnist's preface: I first met heart transplant recipient Leah Smith in 1999. She was 7 and on her way from Fort Wayne to Washington, D.C., to meet with Congress and then-President Bill Clinton as part of a delegation chosen by the American Society of Transplant Surgeons to raise awareness on the shortage of organ donations. Born without the lower left chamber of her heart, Leah received a heart transplant when she was 11 days old. Wise beyond her years, she told me the Texas parents of a baby named Jimmy donated his heart after he died in an accident. “We're sad for his family,” she said, “but if they hadn't decided to have their son be a donor, then there would be two kids dead.”

Jimmy's heart has been beating inside Leah Smith's chest for 22 years. It has served her well. In that time she's won multiple state figure skating championships and competitively ballroom danced her way to top awards. She's met U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and skated with figure skating legend Michelle Kwan.

Leah has been a Children's Miracle Network Champion, served as a lobbyist for the National Association of Children's Hospitals and had a national foundation formed in her honor by race car driver and automobile designer the late Carroll Shelby, also a heart transplant recipient. She's hobnobbed with Jay Leno and met other dignitaries and celebrities.
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{Register to be an organ,eye and tissue donor. To learn how, www.donatelife.net or www.organdonor.gov}

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