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Donor’s family unexpectedly meets man with relative’s heart at St. Louis Cardinals game

ST. LOUIS — Sunday was Transplant Awareness Day at Busch Stadium in St. Louis and thousands of baseball fans attended the afternoon game between the St. Louis C...
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ST. LOUIS — Sunday was Transplant Awareness Day at Busch Stadium in St. Louis and thousands of baseball fans attended the afternoon game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Cincinnati Reds to support organ donation.

One of the people attending the game had an unexpected meeting with the man who received her brother’s heart. Video of the emotional encounter is going viral.

This is what Savannah Chavez Roesch posted to Facebook:

“Today was a day I will NEVER EVER forget!!!!! This is definitely an amazing experience & am just SO blown away!! The video just says it all!!

Her brother was an organ donor and a year ago her family received a letter from the recipient.

“It’s such an intense feeling knowing you are so close to contact but really no idea who they are,” Roesch wrote.

Roesch wrote that she isn’t a baseball fan (at all) but they went to Busch Stadium for the Donate Life day.  During the game they were getting a family picture taken – all wearing T-shirts with Donovan’s photo – when she heard someone ask if they were his family.

She described what happened next, writing:

It was the recipient of Donovan Bulger ‘s heart!!!!!!!!! His daughter recognized the picture on our shirts & told her mom she thinks it’s Donovan’s family!!!! Without hesitation, her mom came up to us & asked because they were just as eager to know who we were just as we were eager to meet them!! We were all in COMPLETE SHOCK & AWE!!! I think everyone in the ballpark heard our cries & shrieks of complete shock & joy!!!! I had been waiting to hear back from them since I wrote that letter & to FINALLY meet him & his WONDERFUL family COMPLETELY RANDOM by chance like that was a feeling I CANNOT even begin to describe!!!! We went back & got a group picture with our new found family!!!

The man took turns holding Roesch and her family members to his chest so they could listen to Donovan’s heart beat, all of them overcome by the moment.

“I think Donovan arranged for us to meet this way,” Roesch wrote. “What are the chances of this happening?!?”

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