South Bay man shares survival story and hopes others ‘take care of their hearts’

These days, you can see Eddie Garcia walking his usual four miles a day and soaking up everything and everyone around him.

That’s because he still remembers the day in 2010 when everything went dark.

“I was on top of the world,” Garcia said. “Everything was going great, and from one second to the next, my whole life just collapsed. It was a terrible, terrible night.”

Garcia, a San Jose resident who was 46 at the time, suffered a massive heart attack. His case is not unusual.

The latest study by the American Heart Association shows that more than 52% of Hispanic men in the United States suffer from heart disease, the silent killer.

An attack in 2010 left Garcia in desperate need of a new heart.

Today he walks with the heart of a man he never knew and from a family he never met.

“I have their son’s heart – because I know it’s a man – their son’s heart is in my chest,” Garcia said. But this is my heart too.

Since then, Garcia has vowed to look after the man’s heart. And everything was going well until the day when his doctor called with disturbing news.

“My doctor calls and she says, ‘Eddie, you need to come to the hospital right now,'” Garcia said, adding that the doctor found a rejection of the heart.

A new blood test by Peninsula called CareDX has allowed doctors to see that something is wrong — something that previously required a much more invasive test.

The test showed that Garcia received the early treatment he needed and now walks without problems while exercising his heart.

These days, Garcia is also a supporter of organ donation, giving speeches and even writing a book about his survival story called Summer in the Waiting Room.

“I want to do my best to use my story to let people know they have to take care of their hearts,” Garcia said. “Because it’s worth it.”