After Son's Death at 25, Parents Were Shocked at How Many People He Helped with Organ Donation: 102 and Counting (Exclusive) Sam GilletteNovember 2, 2025 at 2:00 AM 0 Jessie Carlton Photo Dylan Wormsbaker (right) with his fiancée, Angela Pace (left), and their four children. In March 2023, a couple's life imploded when their 25yearold son Dylan died after a motorcycle accident in Twin Falls, Idaho They take solace in the fact that he was able to help 102 people through organ donation "We're just amazed at how many lives he changed," says dad Curtis On March 17, 2023, Kim Wormsbaker's coworker ...
- - After Son's Death at 25, Parents Were Shocked at How Many People He Helped with Organ Donation: 102 and Counting (Exclusive)
Sam GilletteNovember 2, 2025 at 2:00 AM
0
Jessie Carlton Photo
Dylan Wormsbaker (right) with his fiancée, Angela Pace (left), and their four children. -
In March 2023, a couple's life imploded when their 25-year-old son Dylan died after a motorcycle accident in Twin Falls, Idaho
They take solace in the fact that he was able to help 102 people through organ donation
"We're just amazed at how many lives he changed," says dad Curtis
On March 17, 2023, Kim Wormsbaker's coworker returned to their office in Twin Falls, Idaho, with a look of shock on her face. She'd just walked by a horrific motorcycle accident.
"I'm not sure he is going to make it," the woman told Wormsbaker, 63.
All too soon, Wormsbaker's world shattered when her husband, Curtis, 59, called and she learned the victim was their 25-year-old son, Dylan.
The journeyman plumber and father of four had been riding his bike through town when he was hit by a minivan that failed to yield.
"My survival instincts kicked in, and I was just numb," Kim tells PEOPLE in this week's issue of receiving that devastating call.
It wouldn't be until about an hour later, during the long drive to Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center (EIRMC), that the couple learned the full extent of their son's injuries.
"They informed us that my son was fighting for his life," remembers Curtis, who had pulled over onto the side of the road. "They needed to cut his skull open to release the pressure if we wanted a chance to save him."
The panicked father called state police to request an escort, but that wasn't possible.
Instead, the couple rushed on their own to the medical center. Their son died a week later of a traumatic brain injury. (The driver of the van, Afton Gailfus, was convicted of vehicular manslaughter.)
HCA Healthcare's Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center (EIRMC)
Kim and Curtis Wormsbaker.
The young businessman left behind a grieving family: his parents, four siblings and fiancée, Angela Pace. The two shared four kids in a blended family — his son, 4-year-old Sawyer, her 9-year-old daughter Emalyn and 5-year-old son Alaric as well as their son together, 3-year-old Denver — and had big dreams for the future.
As heartbreak washed over them, there was one positive bit of news that kept Dylan's parents anchored: they learned their son, a registered organ donor, could help others.
When he was about 20, Dylan signed the designated spot on his license and told his dad he'd made the decision in case anything "bad happened" to him. Five years later, Dylan has been able to help an astonishing 102 patients around the country, from kids to retirees, who ranged in age from 15 to 77.
"It was enlightening and impactful and important that we gave him that honor to be that hero," says Kim. She and Curtis were guided through the process with the help of representatives from the organization Donor Connect.
There is a desperate need for such gifts.
More than 100,000 people in the U.S. are currently waiting for transplants — and one person can save up to eight lives through solid organ donation. Dr. Danielle Brandman at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center has made a career of such surgeries.
"It's really a gift to be able to see my patients return to the people that they had been before they had been so sick," says Brandman, the hospital's medical director of liver transplantation. "We really are changing lives every single day."
The Wormsbakers learned just how much of an impact their son had when they received a note from a man who received one of Dylan's kidneys. "We're just amazed at how many lives he changed," says Curtis.
HCA Healthcare's Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center (EIRMC)
Dylan with his beloved motorcycle.
The couple — who are raising Dylan's son Sawyer, while Pace raises her two kids as well as their son together — are determined to keep their son's memory alive for his children.
Pace, who declined to be interviewed, has opened an indoor kids' playground, Little World Play, in Twin Falls, which she first started planning with Dylan.
"For the past year, we have been working on opening a fun place where our children and our friends' children could play and celebrate special events," Pace wrote on the website. "With a few obvious setbacks, I'm so nervous yet excited to bring the community Little World Play."
HCA Healthcare's Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center (EIRMC)
Dylan with his mom, Kim.
Kim is full of admiration for Pace.
"They really knew how to work together," she says of the couple's relationship.
— sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
The Wormsbakers make a point to bring all four children together, sometimes visiting Dylan's grave.
"They all know their dad is in heaven," Curtis says, "and he's watching them."
on People
Source: "AOL Entertainment"
Source: Entertainment
Published: November 01, 2025 at 10:09PM on Source: TRENDY MAG
#ShowBiz#Sports#Celebrities#Lifestyle