When Death Gives Life

Todd and Tara Storch didn’t have the choice to save their 13-year-old daughter, Taylor, after a devastating skiing accident. In a flash, a Colorado trip went “from the most wonderful, beautiful, exciting family vacation to the worst nightmare we think we could ever imagine,” Todd Storch says.

But what they could do was save other lives by donating their daughter’s organs.

“With everything we were dealing with, that decision to say ‘yes’ was the simplest decision we had to make,” he says. They knew it’s what Taylor would have wanted.

But saving lives for the Storches didn’t stop there. Within months of losing their daughter, they started Taylor’s Gift Foundation, a nonprofit that offers events, speaking engagements and other services with an aim to increase donor registrations throughout the United States and to financially help those who have been touched by organ donation. Through their efforts, the lives their daughter saves is multiplied.

“This has given us purpose in pain,” Tara says.

To coincide with April’s National Organ Donation Awareness Month, the couple is releasing Taylor’s Story, a book that tells their daughter’s story and highlights the men and women who are alive because of her. One mother of two in Arizona received Taylor’s heart—which means, Tara says, “Taylor’s heart has never stopped beating.”

The Storches hope their story helps others endure the dark places of tragedy. “We have searched for the good with God at our side,” Tara says. “We hope people will see they can get through anything with their faith if they just let God in. We feel so blessed that Taylor is being such a tool for Christ.”