Enrique “Ricky” Rivas was only 22 years old when he passed away, but anyone who knew him would comment about his exceptional life. He was exuberant and had a passion for helping others, both on the job with Hope of the Valley Rescue Mission and as a volunteer feeding the unhoused in the San Fernando Valley.
When he saw so many struggling families, he would ask his mom, “Can one person really change the world?”
“Yes – you begin by helping one person, then it becomes two, three, four,” his mother Maria Rivas assured him, explaining that helping one person starts a ripple effect. “The next thing you know, you’re doing it – making a change in the world.”
Today, more than three years after Ricky’s untimely death in a tragic car accident at the too-young age of 22, her own heart is continually reassured that Ricky truly did exactly that – make a life-changing difference in the lives of multiple people and their loved ones – not only through his work and volunteerism, but also by giving the gift of himself as an organ donor.
On July 18, 2020, Ricky was a passenger in a friend’s vehicle while driving on Gravity Hill along Kagel Canyon Road in Sylmar. While speeding down the hill, his friend lost control of the car, causing it to flip over – Ricky was ejected out of the vehicle. He was rushed to Holy Cross Hospital in Mission Hills, where doctors performed brain surgery to try to save his life.
Tragically, their efforts were in vain; doctors later said his brain had most likely sustained fatal injuries in the accident, explained Rivas. The rest of his body, however, was largely unharmed.
“When I went to see him, he looked like he was peacefully sleeping, with only head bandages and a breathing machine,” recalled Rivas about that fateful day. “The doctors said they believe his ending was like a light switch just [turning] off and that gave us much comfort and relief.
“We thanked the Lord … that he just turned off the lights” – sparing him from pain, she said.
Ricky was pronounced dead on July 20.
“He was just so full of love – for life, for other people,” said Rivas, who currently resides in North Hollywood with her husband, Ernesto Mariscal, but raised all seven of her children in Pacoima. “Ricky had so much enjoyment in life, and he shared it with others. He just shined.”
An image of Ricky’s shining, smiling face will be among 34 faces depicted as memorial floragraphs (floral portraits) honoring deceased donors on OneLegacy’s 2024 Tournament of Roses Parade float on New Year’s Day.
A Los Angeles-based non-profit organization that supports organ, eye and tissue donations, OneLegacy has participated in the annual Pasadena parade for 20 years to encourage viewers worldwide to consider becoming organ donors.
A Meaningful Life
During Ricky’s brief but meaningful life, his caring and generous nature led him to work in the non-profit sector as a resident advocate for 15 families at Hope of the Valley’s (now renamed Hope the Mission) Shepherd House in Canoga Park, shared Rivas. In his free time, he volunteered with About My Father’s Business, a homeless outreach organization.
Ricky also enjoyed sharing his passion for music and his guitar talents – including playing songs by his favorite bands, the Beatles and the Red Hot Chili Peppers – with the families he helped, for fundraising events and with musician friends. In fact, he enjoyed playing his guitar so much that his fingers appeared perpetually flattened from the guitar strings, said Rivas with a chuckle.
Rivas vividly recalls the bittersweet day in 2018 when then-20-year-old Ricky came home to proudly show her his first driver’s license. He pointed out the pink dot on his license and asked, “Do you know what this is?” As a registered organ, eye and tissue donor herself, she knew the telltale dot meant he had signed up as a donor on the Donate Life California Registry, said Rivas.
“I’m so proud of you!” she told him, never imagining at the time what the future held.
“I thought it’d be nice to do something once I’m gone to help somebody else,” Ricky told her.
Those words turned out to be prophetic.
Ricky’s Five Gifts
When Rivas was asked to pick a song for Ricky’s “honor walk” – when hospital staff line up in the hallway to honor a patient as they’re transported to the operating room for the recovery of their organs – she chose “Here Comes the Sun,” a song about hope. Despite her profound sense of loss and grief over Ricky’s sudden death, Rivas knew his “gifts” would offer hope to others.
“Five different people received Ricky’s gifts,” said Rivas. Those gifts included his liver, his lungs, both of his kidneys (which went to two different people) … and his heart.
Kyryn Cooper Sanders from Las Vegas, a teacher, wife and mother of four boys, was hospitalized at Cedar Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles receiving treatment and anxiously awaiting a heart donor when Ricky passed away. Her condition had declined rapidly over several months – from the flu, to double pneumonia, to an eventual diagnosis of viral cardiomyopathy and heart failure. Without a new heart, Sanders would die.
With her health severely compromised, when Sanders learned a heart from an unknown donor was a potential match for her, she gratefully went forward and felt confident.
A day after the transplant was completed, Sanders was on a therapy walk with her husband in the patient courtyard of the hospital, when she looked up and saw the outline of a heart in white smoke up in the sky. At that moment, Sanders felt certain it was a message from her donor.
At the exact same time, on the other side of the San Fernando Valley, Ricky’s friends and family had gathered for his celebration of life. A friend of Ricky had hired a skywriter to create a heart in the sky in his honor … the very same heart Sanders and her husband had seen and photographed.
It wasn’t until six months later – after Sanders and Rivas met in person and shared countless hugs, stories and photos – that they discovered they had both been looking at the same billowy heart in the sky at the same time, both feeling grateful for the life of the same remarkable young man.
More than any coincidence, it gave them all an astounding pause. It was yet another connection, they would agree – it was a “sign” from Ricky. And Sanders and her family are forever grateful.
“Without Ricky’s gift of life, I wouldn’t be here to watch my boys grow up,” said Sanders.
Rivas said Ricky’s gifts have inspired others to become donors, including one of his older brothers and three cousins. Two of her work friends have decided to become donors, too.
“I just thank the Lord for so many beautiful testimonials [about Ricky’s gifts] that keep impacting people’s lives,” she said.
“When I see people now and they ask me how I am, I tell them I feel blessed – I’m blessed that I got to see Ricky live his purpose in his short life, because I think this was his life’s purpose,” continued Rivas. “Yes, he had a very short life, but he lived it to the fullest. … And he’s still here, everywhere, and he’s still part of everybody that he helped and everyone he loved.”
Editor Diana Martinez contributed to this article.