The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Couples bonded for life through transplants Best friends forever
Longtime friendships lead to the lifesaving offer from one family to another
Some gifts are timely. Others, timeless.
The gift that Debbie and Brad Thompson gave to Christine and Ron Morales is both. The gift of living. Seven years apart, Debbie and Brad each donated a kidney to Christine and Ron.
Christine, suffering from a debilitating genetic disorder, received Debbie’s left kidney in June 2015. Best friends since their school days at Webber Elementary in Westminster, Debbie didn’t hesitate to help Christine.
Then, this September, Brad gave his left kidney to Ron, whose Type 2 diabetes had forced him onto dialysis two years ago. When Ron went into kidney failure and needed a transplant, Brad instantly followed Debbie’s example.
“It is still unbelievable for us,” Christine said the other day.
The act of love from one couple to another is not lost on the medical personnel at Cedars-sinai Medical Center, where the transplants took place.
Christine describes the special greeting she and Ron now get when they visit the West Los Angeles hospital: “Every time we go into Cedars, they go ‘There’s the couple.’”
Doctors at the Cedars-sinai Comprehensive Transplant Center perform hundreds of organ transplants a year, hitting a record 573 in 2021. Of that number, 269 were kidney transplants.
For the surgeon who handled Ron’s transplant, Dr. Tsuyoshi Todo, the Thompson-morales organ donations stand out as unique in his more than seven years at Cedars.
“This is the first time a husband and wife donated to another husband and wife,” Todo said.
Their lives have harmonized for decades. All four are 62 and each couple has three boys and a girl, who range in age from 38 to 30. They grew up and went to school in neighboring Westminster and Garden Grove.
Telling the story of the tight bond between the two families will never get old at the Morales household in Huntington Beach, where Christine, confessing to an extra burst of holiday cheer, outdid herself when decorating their home of 30 years this Christmas.
“We’re not tired of the story because Ron and I are so excited about the kidneys.”
Before their transplants, she said, “We were really sick.”
She gleefully named her donated organ “Little Deb.” But no namesake moniker has been attached to Ron’s gift kidney, out of deference to the no-fuss Brad.
Brad, dealing with flu-ish symptoms, was missing from the recent cozy scene in a corner of the Morales kitchen. Ron and Debbie sat to either side of Christine. A miniature marquee hung near a sparkling white artificial Christmas tree read, “Twas the Merriest Morales Ho Ho Home.”
Youngest child Kayli Morales bustled at the stove, baking treats and prepping for the tamale-making that night. Her father’s illness had been particularly tough the past two years, emotionally and financially, with the main breadwinner’s construction work disrupted by his kidney problems and his medical care by the coronavirus pandemic.
“It took a lot out on the family,” said Kayli, 30. “We’re really grateful for Debbie and Brad.”
Given their history together, it’s not surprising that Debbie would offer one of her kidneys to Christine.
They became friends in 1968. Third grade. Then, they were Christine Beltran and Debbie Grady, both 8 years old.
Christine was in the same classroom as Debbie’s twin sister. Debbie was in the class next door. But they all played together at recess.
The two girls formed a special bond that grew even stronger when they shared classrooms in fourth through sixth grades and became cheerleaders together in eighth grade at Warner Intermediate and during their last two years at Westminster High School.
Debbie couldn’t put her finger on what it was that made them so inseparable. But they lived a short walk away from each other’s homes, often sleeping over. Debbie remembers going on vacations with the Christine’s family.
“Your mom and dad just took me in,” she said, gazing over at her friend.
Christine, who has two sisters, recalled how much she also wanted to be a sister to Debbie, who came from a family of five.
“I remember looking into her closet and saying, ‘Oh, let’s dress like twins!’”
They grew even closer in high school, adding “Ronnie,” as they called Ron back then, to the friendship when they were sophomores.
“We would go to lunch and talk, talk, talk,” Debbie said.
They both thought Ron was cute, but it was Christine, then 16, and Ron, 15 at the time, who began dating.
Teenage love did not disrupt the girlhood friendship.
“Wherever Chris was, Debbie was,” Ron said of those days. “And wherever Debbie was, Chris was.”
Well, except that time the two friends didn’t shop together for senior winter formal. That’s how they arrived at the dance wearing the same dress.
There was no drama. They burst out laughing.
Debbie went on dates with Christine and Ron. She didn’t meet Brad, who grew up in Garden Grove, until they were 21.
Their first apartment right out of high school was a twobedroom on 11th Street in Garden Grove that they shared. Christine worked as an accountant for Canon business machines; Debbie was an office clerk at General Telephone.
Christine was the first to marry, in 1982, with Debbie as her maid of honor. A year later, Christine stood beside Debbie when she married.
The Moraleses moved to Riverside for 11 years. The two young moms remained close through phone conversations and occasional get-togethers. When the Morales family returned to Orange County and settled in Huntington Beach, they were a much closer drive to the Thompsons in Garden Grove.
Throughout their friendship, Christine and Debbie told each other everything. “Still do,” they chime together, now that they are grandparents.
Yet, when she got so sick from polycystic kidney disease,