NEW YORK (1010 WINS) – There were plenty of tears when a retired police officer got to meet the family of the man whose heart is beating in his chest.
Retired police officer Robert Pascarelli spent seven months waiting for a heart.
Two years later, he got to meet the family of the man who saved his life.
That man, John Erickson, was struck and killed by a car in 2016 while walking on Long Island.
There wasn’t a dry eye at the LiveOnNY offices in Midtown on Monday when Erickson’s mother, Donna, listened to the beating heart of her son with a stethoscope.
“I mean, that’s like a miracle and a half,” she said. “And what a hell of a nice guy.”
Pascarelli, a 66-year-old father of three, called the experience “the best thing in my life, other than getting that heart.”
John’s widow Megan, from Queens, called it “the best gift you can give anybody.”
Erickson saved three other lives with the organs he donated, and now Pascarelli says he’s registering to be a donor as well.
There are some 114,000 people nationwide in need of an organ. Nearly 10,000 of them are in New York.