"It seemed to be OK once we accepted finally that he was gone," she said.

Domingo was one of four people saved by Steven the day he died. Tony Sagayadoro and Celita Julian each received one of his kidneys. Another man received Steven's liver.

They are among 71 people who have been saved by organ transplants since July 2001, when a partnership began between the Honolulu Police Department and the Organ Donor Center of Hawai'i.

The Ginozas and three organ recipients exchanged letters for about a year before a meeting was arranged by the Organ Donation Center of Hawai'i at St. Francis Medical Center. The Ginozas have never met the California man who received Steven's liver.

"Never once did it hurt to hear from them," Jessie Ginoza said. "It really helped our grieving process."

"I feel sorry for other families that don't get to connect with the organ recipients," Frank Ginoza said. "They don't have the fine ending that we have."

That connection between these former strangers is immediately apparent. Julian calls Jessie Ginoza "mother." The Ginozas have attended the graduations of Sagayadoro's daughter and Domingo's son, and they all have been to parties together. Domingo and Sagayadoro traveled with the Ginozas to Florida in 2002 for the Transplant Games, an event where donors and recipients compete in their own version of the Olympics.

After the transplant, Domingo, who is a University of Hawai'i student, says she started loving chocolate-covered raisins and Nestle crunch bars, two of Steven's favorite foods. She even considered majoring in civil engineering. This was before she knew anything about Steven, who was a civil engineer for the Board of Water Supply.

"I've learned to live that Steven didn't pass away," Domingo said. "He lives on in me."

The full-blooded Japanese Ginozas remind the three recipients that they are now Japanese, too. Julian is about to take a Japanese language course and sometimes craves sushi. And all three say they have a new energy.

"Now it's like I'm alive," said Julian, a shift supervisor at Hickam Air Force Base's exchange. "People ask me, 'Celita, what kind of power bar do you eat?'"

"I know when I got sick, I thought I was going to die," Domingo said. "You do get this second chance. So to me, we need to live life to its fullest."

Sagayadoro feels the same way. "Each day's a bonus. You can look at it that way," he said. "Everybody's living a normal life all because of the generosity of a family."

Sagayadoro now works with Organ Donation Center of Hawai'i as a program coordinator for the Minority Organ Tissue Transplant Education Program and the largely Filipino community group Bayanihan.

While people can designate themselves as an organ donor on their driver's licenses, the Organ Donor Center of Hawai'i has no way of immediately knowing the designation. A new law allows ODCH to contact HPD dispatch and find out whether "organ donor" was designated on a person's license. Families could then make informed decisions about a potential donor's wishes.

"Grieving families find comfort in being able to give life to others, that they honor the wishes of a loved one," said Felicia Wells-Williams, who was the ODCH liaison for the Ginozas and the organ recipients. "In all the pain and loss they are able to think of others and want to give hope to others."

ODCH's executive director Darryl Ing says that there is a 100 percent consent rate when families know potential donors have listed themselves as organ donors. The overall consent rate has risen from 31 percent to 49 percent because of the law, he says.

The same law also allows people to donate $1 to the Hawai'i Organ Donation Coalition when they renew their motor vehicle registration.