GIFT OF LIFE: A heartwarming backdrop of Christophe Arroyo with infant daughter Annabelle looms over his widow and the people who got his organs. (
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They have nothing in common, but they’re all thankful for the same thing today — a generous man who donated his organs.
Three New Yorkers — a chief detective, a hip-hop producer and an insurance adjuster — received the desperately needed organs from hedge-fund manager Christophe Arroyo, a 39-year-old father of two who died of a brain aneurysm last year while running a half-marathon.
All three had a tearful first meeting with Arroyo’s beautiful widow, Yovanka Bylander Arroyo, this week to show their appreciation.
“I was given an opportunity to live,” said a grateful Janelle Stiglic, 42, an insurance adjuster in upstate Dutchess County who received Arroyo’s pancreas and kidney after waiting two years.
“I was chosen over other people. It makes you want to do something good for somebody else.”
The French-born Arroyo — a die-hard New Yorker passionate about great food, architecture and entrepreneurship — was three weeks shy of his 40th birthday when he died in May 2011.
The Upper West Side resident was in perfect health, fresh off celebrating his son’s seventh birthday a week earlier.
Timothy Harris, 28, an underground hip-hop music producer in Hempstead, LI, got a liver.
And Arroyo’s heart now beats inside Rockland County’s chief of detectives, Peter Modafferi.
“I’m going to catch a lot more bad guys now,” said Modafferi, 63, who was on a waiting list for three years and was just days from death.
“Christophe lived larger than life — it is only appropriate that he lives on through you,” widow Yovanka Bylander Arroyo told the group, who met at the New York Organ Donor Network’s headquarters.
As the widow spoke, pictures of her life with Christophe and their children filled two screens. In one, he leaned handsomely against a small propeller plane. The recipients were moved.
“I have a tingly feeling from my toes all the way up my body,” said Harris, who brought his wife and 4-year-old son.
Stiglic gave Arroyo’s widow a necklace with the word “Grateful” and said she plans to run a marathon like the man who gave her a new life.
“These people all faced life-threatening situations and they pulled through,” said Yovanka, who survives her husband with their children, Alexandre, 8, and Annabelle, 6.
“They are moving forward, and Christophe is a part of that — and that is amazing. Inevitably, it’s all moving forward.”