September 24, 2008, dawned bright and clear. Chad Wieneke, son of Glenn and Jackie Wieneke of Lismore, started his workday at Pace Manufacturing in Brandon, South Dakota. Not long into the morning, Chad suffered a heart attack that would prove to be fatal. He was just thirty-five years old.
Glenn and Jackie received a telephone call that day, informing them that Chad had been rushed to a hospital in Sioux Falls. The couple rushed to their son’s side. There was nothing more the doctors could do for Chad. It was then that members from LifeSource approached the family, asking about the possibility of donating Chad’s organs. “Chad had renewed his driver’s license about a month prior to his death. At the time, he told me that he had checked the box that asked for consent to be an organ donor,” says Jackie, “I had not remembered that until that day in the hospital. I knew it was his wish, but [I thought] ‘did he want to do it? did he know he would be called on so soon’?” The members of LifeSource spoke to the family for a long time that day. “I wanted them to treat him with respect,” recalls Jackie. Although bereft with grief, the family felt strongly about honoring the decision Chad had made a month earlier when he indicated his desire to “donate organs, tissues, and eyes to save or enhance someone’s life through transplantation.”
As of January 2011, ten people had benefited from Chad’s gracious gifts. Seven people, ranging in age from 17 to 67, have been recipients of bone and connective tissue, utilizing a total of 23 tissue grafts. These recipients were from the following states: Minnesota, California, Texas, Ohio, New Jersey and North Carolina. Three more people, a woman (age 58) and two men (one age 72, the other age 76), received femoral and saphenous vein grafts. The Wienekes received a letter from LifeSource that stated, “Chad’s gift of tissue donation has made a tremendous difference not only in the life of the individuals who received that gift, but also in the lives of the recipient’s friends and family. Chad lives on in a legacy of kindness because of his gift.” Jackie says, “It’s so nice to know that Chad, who had a big heart, has continued to help people long after his death.”
Chad was always a loving, caring person, according to his friends and family. “He loved to help people, to teach, to share his time,” says Jackie, “he loved to teach youngsters how to hunt and fish.” Friends since they were “old enough to walk,” Todd Loosbrock remembers that Chad had always had a great capacity for caring. “The donor thing doesn’t surprise me at all,” says Loosbrock, “Chad was always very aware of the emotional side of people – he genuinely cared about others.“
Scott Nath, another long-time friend of Chad’s, was with him the night before he died. Nath says, “Chad would have done anything to help anyone out – he was always thinking of other people. He would not have hesitated to be a donor – he would have said: ‘why wouldn’t someone become a donor’?” On the evening before his death, Chad told Scott that he was going to see his twenty one-month old son, Joshua. “Chad was a very good father,” says Nath, “his heart and soul were into his son.” Plans were in place for Chad to marry Joshua’s mother in October of that year.