Erika Thomas is a second year student at Central Michigan University, studying music education. Her father, Erik, passed away while he was waiting on a heart transplant in 2018.
Even though he did not receive a organ donation, he was able to help other people by donating his liver, tissue and corneas.
"So my father's passing happened when I was 12," Thomas said. "And so over the years, I've kind of just taken the grief that I've felt, and I've turned it into advocacy for organ donation."
Bringing awareness to her peers
During her junior year of high school, Thomas attended the John Ball Zoo, Gift of Life Michigan's annual Donate Life Night. This night helped inspire her to get more involved in organ donation advocacy, and she wanted other students to know the impact they can have.
Gift of Life Michigan is a statewide organ and tissue recovery program that connects people in need. There are more than 2,500 Michigan residents on the waitlist to receive an organ donation, according to Gift of Life Michigan.
Thomas also brought the All of Us program to her high school. The All of Us program is designed to cover the fundamentals of organ, eye and tissue donations and transplants.
Thomas said the most common misconception about organ donation is that doctors will decide to donate a patient's organs before doing everything they can to keep them alive. However, Thomas says, this is not true.
"Yeah, the misconceptions just, they kind of ruin the whole point of organ donation," Thomas said. "And so spreading awareness about it can really just spread the facts."
In Thomas's senior year of high school, she chose to spread her story to an assembly for middle and high school students about organ donation.
After her senior year, she was asked to share her story at a capitol rally. A groups of law makers were pushing a bill to implement organ donation into the curriculum for high schools.
Advocacy on CMU's campus
When she was deciding on which university to choose, she felt drawn to CMU because of the community, the music program and it was close to her hometown of Stanton.
As she was starting her second semester as a freshman, Thomas learned about the Campus Challenge and was excited to get involved. Campus Challenge is a competition between Michigan campuses to get the most students on the Michigan Organ Donor Registry.
After talking with a professor, Thomas started a Gift of Life Michigan student organization on campus.
"Recruitment hasn't really happened a whole lot this year because me and my friends are such busy people," Thomas said. "And so it's kind of been off to a rough start so far, but we're trying to push past all the barriers that have come up and we're hoping to get things rolling here pretty soon."
She says that they are hoping to have a rock painting and comfort blanket making event soon for the CMU Gift of Life chapter. As of right now, the group is only having executive board meetings but they hope in the coming weeks that general meetings will be moved to every week on Friday.
Erika's future with advocacy
Thomas hopes to really get her chapter off the ground this semester, by signing up more students for the Michigan organ donor registry.
When it comes to advocacy, Thomas said that she knows her future will look different once she graduates but she will never stop advocating.
"I mean, I can always be a Gift of Life volunteer and always just do what I can to raise awareness," she said.
