NALC Branch 1221

He had just left for work when he remembered something he had forgotten back at his apartment.

It was about 4 a.m. March 13, 2006, when he hurried through the door and ran up the flight of stairs.

Then he went blind.

The moment started Kevin on a journey that took him to death’s doorstep. Four years later, memories from his journey still bring tears to his eyes.

Lightheaded, Kevin hugged the support beam at the top of the steps for 20 minutes before his vision returned.

“Something was just telling me whatever you do don’t fall down. Hold on, and let’s see what happens from here,” Kevin said.

Rather than seek medical help, Kevin called in sick to the UPS office where he had worked for 17 years. He fell asleep, thinking he was exhausted from a hectic weekend full of activities with family.

A good team

The 20-minute commute to pick up his daughter, Hailee, passed slowly.

Kevin and his roommate, Kevin Jackson, known as Preme, would pick up Hailee from the other side of Queens.

The father and daughter made a good team.

She loved to eat.

He loved to cook.

And the two made a night of doing both every other weekend.

Cooking seafood was the dad’s specialty, and the daughter knew exactly what she wanted when she got in the 2002 Ford Explorer – lobster.

“It looked like she got in a fight with a bucket of oil,” Preme said. “She had lobster in her hair, all over her face and arms up to her elbows. Her shirt was soaked. There was lobster everywhere.”

“And then, it was gone,” Jackson said of how quickly Hailee ate.

Kevin’s own childhood pushed him to be a better father to Hailee.

Born Feb. 27, 1971, Kevin never had a father to guide him through life, learning mostly from trial and error.

His parents, two Panamanians, became friends when they were 12 and married young. But the childhood sweetheart’s relationship soured, and they separated after Kevin was born, divorcing in 1977. He would see his father only a few times growing up.

Kevin struggled with bitter feelings toward his father for leaving them and starting a new life. “What about me and my siblings? Where did we go wrong? We were just kids,” he said.

But Kevin was determined not to mimic his dad’s departure.

When Kevin and his wife divorced, Kevin pushed for and won joint custody of Hailee.

Heart trouble leads to blindness

His blindness came after years of heart trouble for Kevin.

Kevin thought he was fatigued, but doctors diagnosed a more severe problem – the left side of his heart had stopped working. An infection, viral cardiomyopathy, had taken a horrible toll.

They predicted he had at most two weeks to live unless he allowed them to implant a device that would keep him alive.

“At that point, I just gave up,” Kevin said. “I said to myself, ‘If I had cancer or anything else, this would be the breaking point where it was out of my control,’

“I just shut down from there. I didn’t want to talk to anybody or see anybody. I just accepted it.”

A priest and a psychologist tried to talk him into accepting the device, but it was his mom who finally got through to him by talking about his daughter.

“My mom showed up,” Kevin said. “She said she understood how I had lived a full life and done a lot of things many people would never even dream of doing, but there was no way she could tell this little girl that something had happened to him.”

“You can’t quit on me,” Kevin remembered his mom saying. “This isn’t about you anymore. This is about Hailee.”

Doctors put the two-pound titanium pump into Kevin’s abdominal cavity.

The device would keep Kevin alive for about a year.

The long-term cure Kevin needed was a new heart.

He was bumped to the top of the transplant list, but because of his size, 6 feet 1 inch tall and 250 pounds, Kevin needed the right heart – one in perfect condition from a man of roughly the same size.

So Kevin waited for his match to die.

Part 3:

The 6-foot-1 inch, 250-pound New Yorker stopped mid-stride as he walked beside the skyscrapers of Manhattan.

He was shaking and in tears.

He held a letter from the family of his organ donor, ripping it open as he headed toward the lot where his car was parked on 168th Street.

“When I got to that part of the letter about where I found out this guy was a chef, I stopped in my tracks,” Kevin Nurse said. “I’ve never had anything in life literally stop me dead in my tracks.”

A year earlier, Aug. 3, 2006, Kevin had received a heart transplant. The life-saving procedure came five months after the left side of his heart stopped working. He was about to finish a journey that took him from death’s doorstep to a family in Texas he never knew existed.

Clinching the letter in shaking hands, Kevin turned and hurried back to the transplant center. He couldn’t believe the man who gave him his heart shared his love of cooking.

“Daniel didn’t finish his work, but he is going to be able to finish it through me,” Kevin said he realized. “That’s why this happened to me. You know what, I’m going to take my love for cooking and his love for it. It’s got to be worth something.”

A second chance

Kevin’s close encounter with death made him reconsider what to do with his second chance at life.

The 17-year UPS employee turned down a promotion to start culinary school, studying at the Institute for Culinary Education in New York City.

“I almost died. I’m going to do something I love,” Kevin said. “I’m going to go cook.”

His sister, Diorling Nurse, had encouraged him to switch careers long before a viral infection damaged his heart.

Diorling noticed Kevin take an interest in cooking and cars when he was a teenager. She was disappointed when Kevin, then 19, turned his temporary position with UPS into a career.

She thought he was letting his life pass him by.

The gift of a heart had changed Kevin’s life, but a nagging feeling remained.

“It was a bittersweet thing,” Diorling said. “There was someone out there crying while we were jumping up and down for joy.”

Parents’ pain

Daniel and Cecilia Zarate took the familiar route home on U.S. Highway 59 a few weeks before Christmas 2007.

Daniel drove while Cecilia usually opened the mail on the half-hour trip to their house in Edna. But, as the second Christmas since their son Daniel’s death neared, the couple cried.

Holidays made the family feel the loss even more. Their son, Daniel Zarate Jr., died Aug. 2, 2006, in a car crash near Alexandria, Va. He had moved there to pursue his career as a chef.

Since their son’s death, many of their car conversations focused almost exclusively on him.

This trip specifically was hard for Cecilia.

The couple arrived home and sat on their couch. Cecilia laid her head on her husband’s chest, and the two wept.

“If only I could hear Daniel’s heartbeat and the person who got it, I think it would help me,” Cecilia told her husband.

Cecilia flipped through the mail and noticed a letter from the transplant center. She opened it.

Kevin, the heart recipient, wanted to meet them.

“A feeling of relief that calmed the heart came over me with the thought of meeting Kevin,” Cecilia said.

20/20 arranges meeting

Kevin and the Zarates first got to know each other over the phone. Every Zarate family member eagerly took a turn at the phone during those early conversations.

The first visit in early June was a one-day stay in New York arranged by “20/20.” A producer of the ABC prime-time news show had spotted a YouTube video about Kevin’s transplant.

Kevin’s culinary school produced the video as a promotional tool. Kevin, who was waiting for the Zarates’ contact information from the transplant center, hoped the family would see the video and contact him.

The show flew the Zarates in to film the story for an upcoming episode scheduled this fall.

They met again Aug. 1 in Edna away from the glare of the network cameras. This time, Kevin made the journey.

“Knowing my son’s heart came home,” Cecilia said before breaking into tears.

“We’re thankful, sad,” Daniel continued.

Kevin stayed with the Zarates.

Daniel and Cecilia took Kevin to the places where their son went to school, visiting Corpus Christi’s DelMar College, Lone Star College near Montgomery and Edna High School.

Kevin and the Zarates slowly wound through the halls of Edna High, stopping for moments at classrooms and areas where Daniel and Cecilia would recount stories of their son’s time as a student there.

The three rested on a bench among the senior locker section. A 10-foot Edna Cowboys rally prop sat in between rows of blue lockers and overlooked them.

“One of these lockers was his. He was actually here,” Kevin said.

“Through this whole process, I’m glad to know they were willing to meet me, care for me,” Kevin said, explaining his personal fears his donor’s family wouldn’t want to meet him because he was black.

“It’s good to be able to share that with them. They were the ones ...,” Kevin said, stopping as tears trickled down his cheeks.

Kevin said he felt as if he had a new family.

“The family I’ve always dreamt about, I’m a part of now,” he said.

Even a six-day visit wasn’t long enough, Kevin and the Zarates said. Kevin said he plans to visit again, this time bringing his daughter, family and close friends with him.

“He’s family now,” Daniel added.

For the Zarates, Kevin’s visit was a rush of emotions.

“I wish I could have both of them,” Cecilia said. “I always wanted to adopt. This is something like that.”

A relative loaned Daniel and Cecilia a stethoscope so the family could listen to their son’s heart.

“To be able to still hear my son’s heart beating in someone else, that’s something,” Cecilia said. “It’s wonderful and hard, too.”

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