Organ Donors Receive Discounts from Local Businesses with Have a Little Heart Program |

If you're a registered organ donor, you could be getting some extra perks for potentially saving a person's life. Several local businesses are offering discounts to you if you have the red heart on your driver's license.

The program is called "Have a Little Heart" created by the Donor Network West and Reno mayor Hillary Schieve.

The hope is get people to start talking about donating their organs. The discounts local businesses offer will not be to raise money for charity, but to raise awareness about organ donation.

"It just is creating a community of people that can share with each other, even in the face of something bad happening," said Kathe Sorrentino Wilson, a mother of an organ donor.

Kathe Sorrentino Wilson is talking about the program benefiting Northern Nevada. She's the mother of an organ donor, her 12-year-old son Gabriel, who passed away in 1999 after an accident.

"He decided to put his helmet on and jump on the go cart one last time," said Sorrentino Wilson.

Her son donated four organs to people in desperate need of a transplant.

Sorrentino Wilson said, "I look at organ donation as the ability to take a really really bad situation that already had happened, and try to create another miracle out of it. And Gabe would have been the first one to say, I'm all on board with this. That's the best decision ever."

Currently in Nevada, there are more than 600 people on the waiting list for an organ transplant.

"If one person was going to pass away in a hospital and have the potential to save another life, would they want to rule themselves entirely or put themselves in the position where they can be a hero to others. That's kind of the question that we're hoping folks will ask themselves when the see the heart, the Have a Little Heart program," said Zach Hasauer, with Donor Network West.

The owners of more than 40 local businesses will be offering discounts to registered donors.

Jeremy DeMarzo, the owner of Icecycle Creamery said, "We'll be offering a ten percent discount for anyone that shows their donor ID."

Hasauer adds, "I ask folks to not think much about what happens afterward. But the lives and the legacy they're about to give to other people, who can watch their kids grow up, maybe have a second shot at living."

Janice Taylor is one of those people to have gotten a second shot at life.

"I didn't have to miss out on my daughters and now my grandkids. My grandkids, two of which I would have never met," said Janice Taylor, a heart transplant recipient.

With the help of an organ donor, she received a heart transplant.

"It was just an incredible gift to give me with my family," said Taylor.

This program will be launching on Friday, April 1, just in time for national donate a life month.

List of Businesses Participating:

Junkee Clothing Exchange

Batch Cupcakery

The Blind Onion Pizza & Pub

The Cheese Board Catering Company

Chez Vous

Core 4 Personal Training

Don's Pharmacy

IceCycle Creamery