SAPD officer donates a kidney guaranteeing his brother in blue receives a transplant
Police officers have each other’s backs every day on the job. It happens in their private lives, as well.
When SAPD patrol officer John Cortinas, 52, began suffering from kidney failure, the Champion for Life program in our University Health Transplant Institute helped him reach out to officers on the police force by sharing his story in a department newsletter. Jacob Block, a fellow officer he didn’t know, responded. Block, 40, a member of SAPD’s officer wellness team, stepped forward to donate one of his healthy kidneys to his brother in blue. Block was not a match for Cortinas, but he agreed to donate to someone else and that guaranteed Cortinas would receive a kidney from a compatible donor.
The transplant team created a paired exchange in which three donors gave kidneys to three recipients who needed them to survive. Over a three-day period in March 2024, Block and the other selfless donors ensured Cortinas and two other very sick kidney patients received the transplants they needed.
A year later the three patients with their new kidneys met their donors in an emotional ceremony celebrating living donation.
Tears rolled down the cheeks of the woman who told Block his transplanted kidney has freed her from excruciating pain. Cortinas threw his arms around the 24-year-old medical student whose donated kidney has allowed him to imagine a longer, healthy life.
"You don't know the new life you've given me,” Cortinas said in a heartfelt moment captured by KENS 5 News for a television story.
Block and Cortinas have not yet met the others who played a role in Cortinas receiving his life-saving transplant, but they will get that chance Friday, Feb. 28 in an event where nine kidney recipients meet the donors who gave them a chance at longer, healthier lives.
Media are welcome to attend and talk with officers Block and Cortinas about organ donation and a new, forever bond that extends beyond the uniform.
Who: SAPD officers John Cortinas and Jacob Block, University of Health Transplant Institute staff, other organ donors and recipients
What: Kidney transplant patients meet the organ donors who enabled their transplants
When: Friday, Feb. 28, 3 p.m.
Where: University Hospital, 4502 Medical Drive. Media may park across the street in the staff lot (map attached), or in the visitors garage near the hospital entrance. Please do not park in the Pavilion clinic parking lot. Follow the covered walkway from the garage into the hospitals. We will meet at the information desk immediately inside the Women’s & Children’s Hospital at 2:30 p.m.
