DMV Employee Who Donated 60% Of Her liver Honored On Donate Life Rose Parade Float
USA: A Stockton DMV worker has been thrust into the spotlight in Pasadena after donating 60 percent of her liver to her mother in September 2016 and now being honored on the Donate Life Rose Parade float. The living liver transplant saved her mother, who had been diagnosed with cirrhosis, and this year the donor was invited to represent organ donors and DMV registrants at the storied parade event.
The donor, Raquel Armstrong, marked the nearly ten-year milestone since the operation and has watched her mother, Rena, regain a full life — able to watch grandchildren and great-grandchildren grow. Armstrong has used her visibility to become an ambassador for donation education, emphasizing early registration and awareness so families need not wait until crises force impossible choices. The transplant remains central: a living-donor liver procedure that altered both women’s futures.
Donate Life California and the state DMV highlighted the broader stakes at the parade tribute. The DMV is credited with registering roughly 95 percent of donor enrollments, and the state faces about 20,000 people on organ transplant waiting lists. Donate Life California’s chief executive shared a personal connection: a close cousin once received a double lung transplant but did not live beyond five years, underscoring both the life-extending power and the limits of transplantation while keeping family time at the center of the mission.
Armstrong was one of two California DMV-affiliated honorees on the float, touring behind-the-scenes construction, making new friendships with fellow donors and families, and taking part in the parade celebration in Pasadena. Her presence served as a vivid reminder that living donation can be lifesaving, that donor registration pathways matter, and that individual acts of transplantation continue to reshape families and communities across California.
Video originally published on 2025-12-30 02:05:00
