SHE GOT & GAVE
How Finest saved her sight then saved a life
NYPD Detective Anita Moore knows all too well how organ donation can change lives — after needing a transplant herself and later donating one of her own.
A cornea from a dead person saved her sight — and her career — and seven months later she donated a large portion of her liver to her desperately ill father.
The Bronx officer has become a passionate advocate for organ donation, along with her boss, Police Commissioner Dermot Shea, who was honored this week for his work by LiveOnNY, an organ donor organization.
The department actively champions organ donation with regular registration drives and presentations to recruits at the Police Academy.
“You hear about it, but it’s just general information until it hits home,” said Moore at Thursday’s ceremony honoring Shea. “Then you realize what a big impact it can make on you, your family.”
She was a cop in Harlem when suddenly, nine years ago, she couldn’t see clearly. Stop signs, traffic lights, even regular reading all were distorted.
Doctors told her she had keratonocus, a bulging cornea, in her left eye, and her vision was saved by a transplant.
Without that transplant, her career would have been over, but she was back on the job in two months.
Within a year, her father needed a liver transplant, suffering the effects of hepatitis that he contracted from a blood transfusion he got after being shot as a U.S. soldier serving in Vietnam.
For Moore, the decision to help her father was clear, but he was reluctant at first.
“I offered, he said no,” she said.
“But I was determined.”
She remembers each of them lying in a bed before the transplant operation, not knowing what might happen next.
“It could be ‘bye’ or ‘see you later,’ “she said. “I started crying. It was heavy.”
Today Moore’s father is 70 years old, alive and well with 68% of her liver in his body.
“I don’t try to convince people to do this,” said Moore, 39, who works with the Child Abuse Squad in Bronx Special Victims.
“It’s such a huge decision, a selfless decision to make. If they want information I give them what I know from my experience, but I don’t want anyone to feel pressured,” she said.
“I’m hoping my story would encourage somebody or give them the will to do it.”
‘It’s just such a blessing,” she said.
Moore added that one day she may need another cornea transplant in her other eye, but gets by now with a specialized contact lens.
The police commissioner said the importance of organ donation was made clear to him on Feb. 12, 2019, when Det. Brian Simonsen was shot dead by friendly fire while responding to a robbery at a Richmond Hill cell phone store.
Shea, chief of detectives at the time, learned that night that Simonsen was an organ donor.
“This was one of the many ways to keep his memory alive,” he said.
LiveOnNy President Helen Irving said organ donation has taken on new importance during the pandemic as people have been forced to assess their futures.
“We’ve been surrounded by death and dying,” she said. “People have had that conversation — What if I die? That’s a difference we’re seeing now.”