Sheriff's Deputy Donates Liver to Save Partner

When a 24-year veteran sheriff’s deputy at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility learned he needed a liver transplant, it seemed like a death sentence.

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 none of his own family were a match. If he didn’t find one, 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. He ended up confiding in Tiscareno, who told Castro he was willing to see if he might be a match.

On Thursday, both deputies will undergo partial liver transplant surgery at County-USC Medical Center.

At a news conference today at a sheriff’s office in Monterey Park, Javier told Castro: “I’m not going to your funeral knowing that I could have helped.”

The two families, not surprisingly, have become close as the surgery approaches. 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.”

Nishida said she had been attending news conferences at the sheriff’s headquarters facility in Monterey Park for nearly a decade and this one really affected her.

“It was very emotional and touching to see someone give that gift of life,” she said.

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• City News Service
• Photo Credit: LA County Sheriff’s Department via Twitter