Organ recipients meet family and honor Tucson teen who was shot and killed at 16

TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Under a ramada at Winston Reynolds-Manzanita Park, James Sanchez’s family sang him happy birthday. It would have been Sanchez’s nineteenth birthday, but unfortunately he was shot and killed at a park in Catalina two years ago.

Melissa Gomez remembered her son, thinking back to how he was he was someone who was good to people and respectable.

“Very happy, always trying to cheer people up,” she described him. “It’s a day of happiness, it was, and now it’s a day of sadness.”

She placed flowers on a new bench dedicated to him at the park where he played baseball for years. Some of his baseball buddies were at the park honoring his life.

“He grew up still knowing the same boys that he played with, so it’s nice to see them here today,” she said. “Seeing them play on this park, just remembering it as you sit down on the bench, it’s very very…it gives me some kind of joy,” Gomez said.

Recently Sanchez’s family put in the bench, which shows the years he lived and “Forever loved, never forgotten.”

Gathered around the bench, his friends and family watched as a priest blessed it and said prayers.

Che Hill was there, but never got to meet James. He came in from California to meet his family, hugging them as he met them. He’s been in contact with them for years, sending them letters and on Thursday got to meet them in person for the first time.

“Talking is one thing but actually putting a face to a real-life person so you can see the impact,” Hill said.

Hill is a recipient of one of Sanchez’s kidneys and his pancreas. The pancreas curing Hill of diabetes he had since he was 14.

“He’s not gone. He lives through myself and the other recipients,” Hill said.

Another recipient of Sanchez’s organ is another James. James “Bo” Thompson had already met Sanchez’s family, but on Thursday he got to meet Hill for the first time.

“We’re a family now. It’s not keeping in touch with his family because now it’s my family,” Thompson said.

As his loved ones gathered together, they were remembering that even though James’ life was taken, he’s saving lives.

“To meet the man that my son saved, it means a lot to us. That’s who he was,” Gomez said.