A 24-year veteran sheriff’s deputy at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility who thought he was facing death because he couldn’t find a donated liver will get one Thursday — from a fellow deputy.
Back in January 2014, doctors told Deputy Jorge Castro they would place him on a waiting list, but they also warned him it was difficult to find a donor and no one in his own family was a match. If he didn’t find a liver for implantation, he could be dead within a year.
Soon afterward, Castro began talking to fellow Deputy Javier Tiscareno, an 18-year veteran of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, while at the gym. When asked how he was doing, Castro tried to say he was fine, but Tiscareno could tell something was wrong.
The treatments weren’t working, and he was getting worse, Castro said. He ended up confiding in Tiscareno, who told Castro he was willing to see if he might be a match. As a result, both deputies will undergo partial liver transplant surgery at County-USC Medical Center Thursday.
“I’m not going to your funeral knowing that I could have helped,” Javier told Castro earlier this week at a news conference in Monterey Park, where the sheriff’s department maintains its headquarters.
The Tiscareno and Castro families became close as the surgery approached. The deputies will be recovering in the hospital for at least two weeks, and a full recovery will take months.
Their wives, said sheriff’s spokeswoman Nicole Nishida, “have become very close and Castro realizes he owes Tiscareno his life.”
“They are like brothers,” Nishida said. “Javier is extremely humble. He just wants to help his friend and partner.”
—Staff and wire reports