Organ recipient flies to Australia to celebrate donor's birthday with his family
Gavin Roberts' trip of a lifetime abroad was cut short when he died after a serious head-on crash with a man who was using his phone behind the wheel.
Gavin, originally from Dapto in NSW, was working in the UK after being headhunted for a position in the engineer field.
But less than a year into his dream job in 2016, he was killed in a car crash. The other driver, who was eventually jailed over the crash, had been using his phone behind the wheel at the time of the incident.
While his life was cut short at 28 years old, Gavin was able to help more than half a dozen people by donating his organs.
On what was meant to be his 30th birthday on Wednesday, one of those organ recipients flew half way around the world to mark the special occasion.
The man, who wished to remain anonymous, received Gavin's lungs and because of that donation was able to board the plane to come to Australia from the UK.
Not only did the organ recipient take part in the birthday celebrations but he also used his new lungs to blow out the birthday candles.
"Someone there thought it would be cool if he blew out some candles," Nathan Roberts, Gavin's brother, told Yahoo7.
Nathan said while he has lost his brother, he has found some comfort in knowing Gavin's death helped introduce new legislation in the UK in relation to driving while using a phone, and there were people who had benefited from his brother's organs.
"Some other family members and friends found the donations to be a really good thing and so do I, but I've also been missing that he [Gavin] isn't here," he said.
"The organ donation is a great thing and meeting the lung recipient the other night was really cool. For part of Gav to be there was pretty cool."
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Nathan said if anything was to come from his brother's death, it was for more people to become organ donors.
"We should consider organ donation to become a default decision," he said.
"Start a discussion with your family so they know what your wishes are before it's too late."
Nathan added people needed to be more diligent on the roads, particularly when it came to using your phone behind the wheel.
"It's easy to go, 'Oh it is just a friend of a friend that it has happened to', but the reality is that it is happening," he said.
"We need to remain diligent on the road and have self control over using your mobile phone while driving."
