When Jeremy Mares applied for a driver’s license at 16, he registered to be an organ and tissue donor, thinking that he might one day be able to save someone’s life, he said.

“Little did I know that 19 years later, someone else’s ‘Yes’ would save mine,’” Mares said.

In March 2018, Mares was admitted into UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital’s intensive-care unit with acute liver failure caused by a rare copper-metabolism disorder called Wilson’s Disease. Just three weeks after being admitted into the ICU, Mares walked out of the hospital with a new liver.

“You hear horror stories about people who wait forever to get a liver,” he said. “For me, the process was pretty fast.”

On Wednesday, Mares joined UCHealth employees and organ donation advocates at Memorial Hospital Central for a flag-raising ceremony to signal the beginning of National Donate Life Month.

Established in 2003 by the nonprofit Donate Life America and other partner organizations, Donate Life Month is observed each April as a nationwide effort to raise awareness about donation and encourage people to consider registering as organ, eye and tissue donors.

“A donated kidney or liver is years of family road trips for the recipient,” said UCHealth charge nurse Molly Hamilton, who chairs the hospital’s donor resource committee. “Each donated organ may be a book read to a child, a holiday season celebrated. The gift of organ donation in unequivocally the gift of life.”

With the exception of 2020, organ transplants have been on the rise every year since 2013, according to data from the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS. Last year, more than 49,000 organ transplants were performed nationwide.

At Memorial Central Hospital, there were 34 organ donors in 2025, Hamilton said. From these, 121 organs were transplanted to patients in need.

Mares’ experience inspired him to become an ambassador for organ donation. He now volunteers with Donor Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to saving lives through organ and tissue donation and supporting patients who are still waiting for a donor.

Nationally, more than 90,000 patients are waiting for the potentially life-saving gift of an organ transplant — including more than 1,300 in Colorado — with another person added to the national waiting list every 8 minutes. About 5,600 people in the U.S. die each year waiting for an organ, officials said.

A single donor can save as many as eight lives through organ donation and enhance quality of life for more than 75 people through tissue donation, according to UNOS.

Few people who register as deceased organ donors are able to donate. According to organdonor.gov, only 3 in 1,000 people die in a way (in a hospital, often on a ventilator) that allows for successful organ donation.

That’s why donation advocates also encourage people to consider becoming living donors, donating a kidney, part of a liver, or parts of other organs while alive. About 6,500 living donation transplants take place in the U.S. each year.

For Mares, National Donate Life Month is an opportunity to tell his survival story and provide living proof of the power of organ donation, he said.

“This program is everything to me,” he said. “Without a liver donation, I would have died at 35. But I am alive, and I feel good. It’s kind of magical.”