Karen’s legacy: Local man shares stoplight conversation that saved four lives

She said it only once, an offhand comment made while her family sat in their truck at the stoplight by the Rhinelander Burger King. If something should ever happen to me, Karen Messenger told her husband, Kim, and their two teenage sons, let them take what they can use, then cremate me and bring me home. Approximately one month later, on Sunday, Jan. 4, 2009, the unthinkable happened. Karen was rushed to the hospital. The family gathered, hopeful that the 41-year-old wife, mother, daughter and sister would recover, but doctors told them she had suffered a stroke and had no brain activity.
Kim, who admits he probably failed to hear his wife when she would tell him to take the garbage out, remembered her words from that moment at the stoplight and he knew what he had to do.
Just over 17 years later, Messenger stood outside Rhinelander Aspirus Hospital Thursday afternoon and watched as hospital staff raised the Donate Life flag in observance of National Donate Life Month. This year’s theme is “Leave a Legacy,” using trees as a symbol of life’s interconnectedness — the idea that, like a forest, donation connects donors, recipients and communities across generations.
Ra’Chell Lucas, director of nursing at Aspirus Rhinelander Hospital, opened the flag-raising ceremony by noting that more than 100,000 Donate Life flags have been raised across the U.S. since the tradition began in 2006. She said the hospital joined hundreds of other organizations nationwide in participating.
“There are more than 108,000 people currently on the national organ transplant wait list, including over 1,600 right here in Wisconsin,” she said. “We recognize their strength and resilience as they wait and hope for a second chance at life.”

Then it was Messenger’s turn to speak. His fingers shook ever so slightly as he held a framed picture of Karen and shared how that moment at the stoplight resulted in a second chance for several people who were running out of time.
Karen’s organs were harvested on the Tuesday after her collapse, he said, and within days her beautiful heart was beating in the chest of a patient in Minnesota. One kidney and her pancreas went to the University of Wisconsin, the other kidney to a recipient from Woodstock, Ill., and her liver to Michigan, he added. Her bone and tissue could not be donated due to an autoimmune disease she had managed for years.
Five organs. Four transplants. And — as Kim would learn in the years that followed — four lives changed.
He and his oldest son have since met three of the four recipients. The meeting that stays with him most involved the young woman from Janesville who received Karen’s kidney and pancreas. She had been hospitalized so long she had contracted infections. Doctors had sent her home to die. Then came a call: they had a match.
“She didn’t believe it,” Messenger said. “She thought somebody was playing a prank.”
Within hours of receiving Karen’s organs, the woman’s color returned. Her mother, Messenger said, felt she had her daughter back — saved by a complete stranger from northern Wisconsin she had never met and never would have met.
Messenger said he has chosen to honor his wife by volunteering with UW Organ and Tissue Donation, carrying their story to anyone who will listen, particularly in the Northwoods, where he once worried the message wasn’t reaching people. He tells the story not because it’s easy — it isn’t and never will be — but because of the goodness he has seen emerge from the worst moment of his family’s life.
He also tells it because he’s not sure he would have donated Karen’s organs if she had not made her wishes known.
“To be totally honest I don’t know if I could have donated (her organs) if she hadn’t told me,” he admitted. “I really don’t.”
“Nobody wants to talk about death,” he added. “But wake up — we’re not getting out of here alive. At least tell your family (what you want).”
This is his central message to anyone who hears his story: register to donate, yes — but more importantly, make sure your loved ones know your wishes. Don’t make them guess at the worst possible moment.
“Like the sticker says, don’t take your organs to Heaven because Heaven knows we need them here,” he said.
Those interested in registering as an organ donor can do so online at heroicdeed.com or at any Wisconsin DMV location. Registration can be completed at any time and does not require a visit coinciding with a driver’s license renewal.