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2004 Games Highlights - Recognition Awards

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Jerry Cound Outstanding Male and Female Awards

The Jerry Cound Outstanding Male and Female Athlete Awards are presented to one male and one female competitor who demonstrate superior athletic achievements during the Games. The recipients of the award have the chance to represent Team USA at the 2005 World Transplant Games in New London, Canada.

The Jerry Cound Outstanding Male Athlete Award was presented to 17-year-old Padraic McCole of Team Philadelphia. Padraic McCole was outgoing, fairly active and extraordinarily thirsty as a toddler who was also unusually small for his age. At eighteen months old, his pediatrician ran some lab tests to get to the root of the problem and to their dismay, Brian and Moira’s only child was diagnosed with dysplastic kidneys, located in an abnormal position. Padraic had moderate hearing loss, which led to his needing a hearing aid – even to this day. Yet he and his parents were still unruffled. Medication, diet and an operation preventing the urine to enter the blood stream avoided the inevitable kidney transplant until Padraic was 13 years old.

Both parents were tested and since Moira was a better match, she was the chosen to be her child’s donor. “I was terrified that the two people closest to me were getting wheeled into surgery, but I was happy when I found out that they were doing fine after the surgeries. The hospital staff had never seen two operations flow so smoothly. In fact, they nicknamed us “the Irish Brigade”.

The tight-knit unit fought one more battle before winning the war. Padraic, who had become quite an accomplished violinist as well as swimmer, experienced a rejection scare shortly after the transplant operation. This prompted doctors to switch the dosage on his immunosuppressant medication and all was well again.

Moira weathered the storm with steely aplomb, “I knew Padraic would make it, because he’s a strong-willed kid who chose to focus on the butterfly stroke in swimming, because it was the hardest. He likes a good challenge.”

And, a challenge is exactly what he got at the National Kidney Foundation 2004 U.S. Transplant Games. Full of hope, the confident 17 year-old high school senior left the Minneapolis-based Games with six medals draped around his neck. Four gold and two silver. He won top honors in the 100-meter individual medley, the 100-meter butterfly, the 500-meter butterfly and 50-meter freestyle. Second place honors were won in the relay races.

The Jerry Cound Outstanding Female Athlete Award was presented to Melissa Choi Salvador of Team Oregon and Washington. School yard nose-bleeds were the norm for young Melissa Choi Salvador, who was suffering from the early signs of aplastic anemia. Blood transfusions helped treat the condition until it miraculously reversed itself when she was twelve.

She led a normal life for more than a decade until the soon-to-be-wed Melissa took a blood test for a marriage license and learned her liver function was off. Additional tests failed to reveal the source of the problem; one doctor suggested her condition had been brought on by pre-wedding jitters. She was sent on her way and asked to watch for any additional symptoms. It wasn't until six months later that Melissa experienced abdominal pain and severe bloating, signs of acute liver failure. The years of blood transfusions had left their mark on Melissa in the form of Hepatitis C and she needed a liver transplant in order to survive. After a seven-month wait, a liver became available in July 1992.

Melissa and her husband adopted a son and lived life to its fullest, grateful for the life that her donor, Joan Plante, had made possible. She wrote Joan's family a letter but never heard back. Unbeknownst to Melissa, her donor's friend, Jackie, also a transplant recipient, attended the Transplant Games alongside Melissa in 1994 and 1998. There her donor's friend deduced that Melissa had been the recipient of her friend's generosity. They struck up a conversation and Melissa learned more about Joan and her mom, Obeline, who lived across the country in Providence, Rhode Island. Jackie brought Obeline and Melissa together and the two have been communicating by phone ever since.

In 1997, to Melissa's surprise, she learned she was pregnant, something she thought to be next to impossible following her transplant. She named her healthy baby girl Joan after her donor. Not only did Melissa win four medals in tennis and track and field competitions but she met Obeline and thanked her in person for the very first time.