Local family reunites with son’s heart recipient at Balloon Fiesta
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Vince Rodriguez, KOAT
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (KOAT) — An Idaho family reunited with the recipient of their late son’s heart at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, marking their first visit to the event.
“Jordan was the kindest, the funniest, the most caring teenage boy,” said a family member.
Jordan Breen, 15, died in a two-vehicle accident in Pocatello on Christmas Day in 2021.
His family traveled to Albuquerque this week because Jordan saved four lives by donating his organs, including his heart, which now beats inside 64-year-old Albuquerque resident Darryl Armstrong.
Armstrong was in heart failure due to cancer treatments at the time of Jordan’s death.
“And had you not received that heart? I would have died.”
Armstrong volunteers with New Mexico Donor Services.
The nonprofit, through its balloon sponsorships at the Fiesta, gifted Armstrong’s donor family with the trip to Albuquerque so they could meet the man who lives because of their loved one.
“Even though he’s not here on earth, I know that he’s looking over me and it just makes me feel like I’m closer to him as I got to meet Darryl more,” said Jordan’s sister.
“I look at Darryl and I still see my son. Even though it’s not him I know that he’s there,” said Jordan’s mother.
“As a recipient, you go through some doubts in your mind whenever you find out who the donor was. You start to experience a little bit of depression and that’s something that I went through and meeting the family and having the family here has just been fantastic,” Armstrong said.
“For a donation to happen somebody has to lose someone and there’s a giant hole in that family or that community. But then you see Darryl and all the work that he’s doing to honor his donor here and that gift of life that continues, so that person’s legacy really evolves,” said a representative from New Mexico Donor Services.
To cap their day Sunday, Jordan’s mother and bonus mom took to the sky on their first-ever hot air balloon ride, uplifted by a son whose gift of life is limitless.