Jim's Memoir: Discover the Journey

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About the Author

In 1971, Jim Stavis was seventeen years old and had just been diagnosed with juvenile type 1 diabetes. The prognosis was specific: kidney failure, heart disease, blindness, amputation. He would be lucky to see fifty.

He went to UCLA. At twenty-two, he founded an automotive parts distributor. In 1988, he co-founded Paragon Steel with his friend Doug Carpenter, running it out of an office above a pub in Long Beach with four employees. Thirty-eight years later, the company is still going strong, having received accolades, including features in USA Today, and their steel pods overlooking the ocean at Tongva Park in Santa Monica, along with many canopies at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, stand as testaments to their success.

Meanwhile, his body was doing exactly what the doctors predicted. Dialysis three days a week before he hit fifty. A heart attack on a ropes course at forty-two, brought back by a friend who had known him since junior high. Then congestive heart failure. Then his kidneys.

Before a transplant evaluation, a hospital social worker asked him a poignant question: "What is your source of hope?"

His cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai told him he needed a heart, a kidney, and a pancreas. The combined procedure had essentially no precedent. Jim confidently responded, "Then I'll be the first."

On November 3, 2005, he went into surgery. Twenty hours later, he had a new heart and a new kidney. The pancreas followed in the subsequent October. Notably, he remains the only triple-transplant recipient in Cedars-Sinai's history and was recognized as a Montaigne Medal Finalist for his inspiring journey.

His donor was Brice Fabing, a seventeen-year-old football kicker at Lompoc High School. On the evening of October 31, 2005, Brice had just kicked a forty-five-yard field goal and was planning a fifty-five-yarder for the following week when he tragically lost his life in a car accident driving home from practice. His family generously donated his organs.

Most transplant recipients never meet their donor's family, but Jim and the Fabings have established a meaningful connection. They walk together every year in the Donate Life California 5K. At their first meeting, Brice's mother, Dorine, put her head on Jim's chest to hear her son's heartbeat. A photograph of Brice hangs in Jim's kitchen, a constant reminder of their bond.

In 2014, Jim faced another loss when Doug Carpenter, his business partner of twenty-five years, succumbed to an infection. Undeterred, he rebuilt the company around this tragedy.

He is seventy-one years old now and continues to inspire others, having shared his incredible story through various platforms, including features in Pacific Book Review. He was once told he would be lucky to see fifty.