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Zest for living

Dad’s kidney gives daughter second chance to achieve goals

Afterward, the Latina judge met with students. She then called on Vernique and asked if the teenager would like to try on her robe.

For the Surprise native, it was a life-altering moment.

“I wanted to go into the legal profession, but I thought the most I could ever be was an attorney. I thought only certain people could become a judge. For her to ask me to do that, I felt like it was a turning point in my life. She was a female, she was Hispanic. I thought, ‘I could do this,’ it was not unobtainable,” says Montoya, now 23.

Thanks to her father, her dream of becoming a judge is still within her grasp.

In August, Johnny Montoya gave Vernique one of his kidneys. She suffers from the rare kidney disease Membranoproliferative Glomerulonephritis (MPGN). The transplant not only rescued her from dialysis, it also gave Johnny the opportunity to give his oldest daughter the gift of life for the second time.

“I didn’t think about it twice. I think that any parent would give it. You’d do anything for your kids and I’m honored to be able to do that,” says Johnny, a building inspector for the city of Phoenix and former Surprise City councilman.

At the age of 12, Vernique spent winter break enduring a fever, chills and excruciating pain near her stomach whenever she moved her leg or arm. Doctors diagnosed her with having MPGN, a disease that ultimately leads to kidney failure and a life dependent on dialysis, or one spent waiting for a kidney donor.

Vernique recalls being prepared for the news. A gut feeling told her that whatever was wrong with her was not going to be fixed with painkillers or medication that treated the symptoms. She researched the disease and got answers to many of her questions on her own.

As she got older, doctors and other adults mistook her chin-up attitude, continued refusal to give in to self-pity and outward strength as ignorance, hubris of the young. When she was 16, doctors brought her to visit dialysis patients in an effort to bring more gravity to her situation.

“I knew this disease would ultimately take my life. But I wasn’t going to stop fighting for my life. I never let it haunt me or scare me. They thought I wasn’t taking it seriously, but that wasn’t it. I didn’t let it overcome me. (I thought) I’ll make it work,” Vernique recalls.

She kept the focus on her studies and in 2002, graduated from high school and received a full academic scholarship to Sterling College in Kansas. Vernique was just six credit hours away from earning a bachelor’s degree in history when the day her family thought was many years away, came.

On February 1 she was diagnosed with the final stages of renal failure. Her kidneys had finally shut down and the search for a matching donor began. She returned home and spent three days a week hooked up to a dialysis machine as her father went through the lengthy process used to determine if he was an appropriate donor candidate. Vernique describes living a limited existence during those months before the transplant, her entire life revolving around those trips to the hospital to get her blood cleaned and fluids pulled out of her by a gurgling machine.

These memories are at the heart of why she is so passionate about the importance of being an organ donor.

“To make an organ donation is saving someone’s life, and to be able to do that, there’s nothing above that,” she says.

When talking about her father and his kidney donation, she says, “It’s just amazing to me that someone could give so much of themselves and volunteer for something that’s so great. I felt like, ‘Wow, he is going to keep me alive.’ I feel very honored. To be able to share it with someone, my gratefulness is unexplainable.”

Both father and daughter are feeling good after a slow but steady recovery period. Johnny is back to work and Vernique plans to earn her bachelor’s degree and go to law school. She hopes to become an attorney and judge in the Maricopa County juvenile court system and, one day, start a nonprofit organization to provide mentoring and inspiration to keep youth in school and off the streets.

In the meantime, Vernique will continue to look forward and not be held back by the disease that will always have a presence in her life.

“Everybody has obstacles, just in another way, shape or form,” she says. “But you can go on and obtain your dreams.”