The bond between some dads and daughters is pretty tight, and in the case of a woman from Fort Worth that bond may prove to be the difference between life and death.
Dawn Patino's family said she was full of life and easy to love.
"The kids and I would spend every waking minute with her," her sister Denise Cook explained. "We couldn't get enough of her. We would just eat her up."
Patino was born to teach and worked at church and at Fort Worth's Daggett Elementary School. But on June 5, as Patino played kickball with her students the last day of school, everything changed.
"She went right down, blew her out (her) Achilles tendon," said her mother, Evie Peterson.
Surgery followed and she was placed in a cast up to her hip. Then her family received a shocking phone call.
"Dawn is on life support," her mother said. "They feel from that surgery a blood clot (formed) that went into her lung."
She died on Father's Day, June 21, at the age of 34.
"(I) got down here and never did get to talk to her again," her father, Lester Peterson said. "So unexpected, as young as she was."
Her family agreed to donate her organs and tissue to help others live and that's where Patino's story takes another unexpected turn.
"I was in the process of scheduling an aortic valve replacement," her father said.
Then Patino's sister had an idea.
"And Denise mentioned, "Mother the Lord knows, maybe it's not time for father to go yet? And her valve needs to be in there," Evie Peterson said.
Some of Patino's organs were transplanted immediately. The valve for her father is waiting and tests will determine whether it's a perfect match.
"It's a little bit hard to see she had to leave us in order for something like this to happen," her father said.
Patino's family said they will hurt for some time, but they are glad that her life mattered, and her death did, too.
"If there's a purpose in that death, organ donation is that purpose," her sister said.
Her mother agreed.
"My daughter died, but she did not die in vain, she touched a lot of lives," she said.
Texas now has an official registry for organ and tissue donation you can enroll at: donatelifetexas.org.
