BOUNTIFUL‘ HARVEST’
Tragic athlete’s organs save 3 grateful NYers
They have nothing in common, but they’re all thankful for the same thing today — a generous man who donated his organs.
Three New Yorkers — a chief detective, a hiphop producer and an insurance adjuster — received the desperately needed organs from hedgefund manager Christophe Arroyo, a 39yearold father of two who died of a brain aneu rysm last year while running a halfmarathon.
All three had a tearful first meeting with Arroyo’s beautiful widow, Yovanka Bylander Arroyo, this week to show their appreciation.
“I was given an opportunity to live,” said a grateful Janelle Stiglic, 42, an insurance adjuster in upstate Dutchess County who received Arroyo’s pancreas and kidney after waiting two years.
“I was chosen over other people. It makes you want to do something good for somebody else.”
The Frenchborn Arroyo — a diehard New Yorker passionate about great food, architecture and entrepreneurship — was three weeks shy of his 40th birthday when he died in May 2011.
The Upper West Side resident was in perfect health, fresh off celebrating his son’s seventh birthday a week earlier.
Timothy Harris, 28, an underground hiphop music producer in Hempstead, LI, got a liver.
And Arroyo’s heart now beats inside Rockland County’s chief of detectives, Peter Modafferi.
“I’m going to catch a lot more bad guys now,” said Modafferi, 63, who was on a waiting list for three years and was just days from death.
“Christophe lived larger than life — it is only appropriate that he lives on through you,” widow Yovanka Bylander Arroyo told the group, who met at the New York Organ Donor Network’s headquarters.
As the widow spoke, pictures of her life with Christophe and their children filled two screens. The recipients were moved.
“I have a tingly feeling from my toes all the way up my body,” said Harris, who brought his wife and 4yearold son.
Stiglic gave Arroyo’s widow a necklace with the word “Grateful” and said she plans to run a marathon like the man who gave her a new life.
“These people all faced lifethreatening situations and they pulled through,” said Yovanka, who survives her husband with their children, Alexandre, 8, and Annabelle, 6.
“They are moving forward, and Christophe is a part of that — and that is amazing. Inevitably, it’s all moving forward.”