On the last day of Qyana Porter’s life, she and her mother ended their day with popcorn.
“She had gone to work and school, and we came home and made Jiffy popcorn,” Latonia Dixson said. “She watched it pop because she’d never seen that before. Then we went to bed. In the morning, I told her, ‘Get up or you’re going to be late.’ I checked on her when she wasn’t in the shower and I found her.”
Porter, 21, a student at San Bernardino Valley College who worked for Amtrak and loved to dance, had a seizure. At the hospital, her mother agreed to donate organs and tissue, 93 parts total, including corneas that helped a family member see.
“I thought I would just be a basket case today, but I’m glad I came. I’m happy,” Dixson said.
Dixson was among the crowd that got a first look at OneLegacy Donate Life’s Rose Parade float “Woven Together: The Dance of Life,” unveiled Thursday, Dec. 8, at Fiesta Parade Floats in Irwindale. Dixson posed with her daughter’s floral portrait, which will be among the 34 memorial floragraphs featured on the float.
The parade entry highlights the Hopi tribe of the American Southwest and features a Native American figure in a headdress, surrounded by woven baskets filled with corn and other fruits from Hopi culture.
Representatives from at least five Native American tribes and organ and tissue recipients will ride on the float while eight living donors will walk alongside.
The family of Alanya Echols spent 10 hours at the nonprofit’s Orange County office to decorate her floragraph, tinting her cheeks with crushed strawberry seeds and using espresso to get her curly hair just so.
“We scraped everything off and started again,” said her aunt Debora Boykins of Lynwood. “It was very intricate. I love the floats all the time but now I have a greater appreciation of how tedious decorating can be, but also how beautiful.”
Marilyn Echols of Bellflower said her daughter took her own life a day after her 28th birthday in 2017. Alanya ran track, was vegan, wrote poetry and had a radio show titled “Lady Says” at Cal State Dominguez Hills.
“Looking at her picture, it’s unreal and at the same time, for me it’s like she’s here,” Echols said. “She had the best smile this side of heaven and a contagious laugh. I’m really grateful that she was able to help. Parts of her heart went to a 1-year-old and a 9-year-old, she helped someone walk because they got her tendons and he wrote us and said now he can interact with his children.”
The Vargas family of Baldwin Park are involved with OneLegacy’s float on several levels. The patriarch, John Joseph Vargas and his wife Florence Castañeda are descended from Mexican and Native American families, with ties to the Kickapoo Native American tribe from Texas and the Potawatomi of Oklahoma.
Jolene Vargas and her older brother Joe both needed kidney transplants. Jolene is a three-time kidney transplant recipient who now serves as an ambassador for OneLegacy.
“I am living proof that donation works,” Vargas said. “My son was 2 when I was diagnosed (with kidney disease) and now he’s 33 and I was able to see him grow, see what life I would not have seen if not for OneLegacy. They change lives every day.”
Her brother David Vargas of San Dimas said their father was 64 when he died of pneumonia in 2000. His corneas went to two people.
“He didn’t want any other family to go through what he and my mom went through,” he said of his father’s decision to be a donor.
Tournament of Roses President Alex Aghajanian said One Legacy’s float brings the important cause of organ donation to a worldwide audience. He said he knows and loves two people who were helped by tissue and stem cell donations.
Rose Princess Olivia Bohanec of Pasadena spoke about the ripple effects of donation. Her grandmother received a liver transplant in 2019.
Tom Mone, chief external affairs officer for OneLegacy, said the company’s 21st entry to the New Year’s Day tradition hopes to get one message out to the world.
“Every story only works because someone cared (to put that pink dot on their driver’s license),” Mone said. “We’re in the parade to remind people it’s not about loss. We’re celebrating people coming together.”