Deceased Toddler Who Gave Others Life and Sight Featured in Tournament House Display on New Year’s Day

Last year, 2-year-old Leia Parker died in a swimming accident. 

“We were just about to leave the pool, and my daughter took off her floatie and tripped and fell,” recalled her mother, Tihani Parker. “My back was turned for maybe 30 seconds, and I pulled her out and because of my training — I am an emergency medical technician — and I started CPR on my daughter.”

But little Leia didn’t make it. A decision had to be made on whether to donate the child’s organs, and they were. 

As a result, today a little boy has a healthy heart, a little girl has a new liver, an older man has two functioning kidneys, and two people — one in Hawaii, the other in San Diego — can see again, each given a new cornea, according to CBS8 News of San Diego.

Leia’s mother said Lifesharing, the San Diego-based company that harvested the child’s organs, selected Leia to be part of a floral sculpture to be placed on the lawn of Tournament House in Pasadena as part of a tribute to organ donors in the Tournament of Roses Association’s annual New Year’s Day celebration, which this year, due to COVID-19, is a virtual event.

A federally designated nonprofit group that coordinates organ and tissue donation in San Diego and Imperial counties, Lifesharing is part of a network operated by Donate Life, a not-for-profit alliance of national organizations and state teams across the United States committed to increasing organ, eye, and tissue donation. 

While there will be no floats, bands, or equestrian units on parade this year, the Tournament of Roses will be presenting “The Rose Parade’s New Year Celebration Presented by Honda,” which will include live-to-tape musical and marching band performances, other segments related to the Rose Parade, celebrity guest appearances, special Rose Bowl Game highlights, equestrians, floats from years past, and a behind-the-scenes look into the making of a float.  The Rose Parade TV special will air on various broadcast networks on Jan. 1.

The Donate Life community normally has a float in the parade, but this year is preparing a floral sculpture that honors donors and donation healthcare professionals. The sculpture, created by award-winning float designer Charles Meier and produced by Fiesta Parade Floats, will be available to view at the Tournament House in Pasadena on New Year’s Day.

The floral sculpture, titled “Community of Life,” features a floral honeycomb built by bees, sharing the message that we are stronger when we work together as a community. Twenty-one hexagonal memorial portraits of donors are interwoven within the honeycomb, symbolizing the life donors give through organ, eye, and tissue donation.

“Much like the families and donors who have given the gift of life, bees epitomize a harmonious community that helps and benefits others. Just like busy bees, donation healthcare professionals devote every single day to make donations and transplantation possible, and the names of six healthcare professionals will be featured within the floral sculpture,” Donate Life officials wrote in a press release.

“In a year of uncertainties, the need for lifesaving transplants continues, and both donor families and donation healthcare professionals are part of the community of life that saves and heals lives through organ donation and transplantation, ” said Tom Mone, chairman of the Donate Life Rose Parade float committee and CEO of OneLegacy, the nonprofit organ, eye, and tissue recovery organization serving the greater Los Angeles area.

“Transplants would not be possible without our generous donors and their families, who, in the midst of tragedy as they lose a loved one, they find the courage to say ‘Yes’ to donation and to save lives. Even in this pandemic, the donation and transplantation community still brings hope to both donor families, as they see their loved ones’ legacy living in others, and to grateful recipients, who now find a second chance at life,” states the press release. 

Parker said she was honored to have her daughter included in the “beehive” of donors in the floral sculpture.

“My answer was ‘yes’ because I felt like everybody should know about my beautiful daughter,” Parker said when asked how she responded when Lifesharing asked to include Leia’s image in the floral tribute.

“Yes, it’s great,” she said. “They did such a great job.”

The art of her daughter is made out of all organic seeds and coffee grounds, and the outcome nearly brought Parker to tears.

There’s also new life in Parker’s life with her 3-month-old baby girl, Charlotte, who she calls her “rainbow baby.”

“When you’re going through that storm, afterward there’s always that beautiful rainbow, so she’s my beautiful rainbow after that storm of losing my daughter,” Parker said.