SAYRE, PENNSYLVANIA (WENY) -- Guthrie hosted an Organ Donation Awareness Ceremony and Flag Raising on Tuesday morning to honor and recognize donors and recipients with the Center for Organ Recovery and Education (CORE). Organ donors and recipients shared their stories and agreed it can be healing to donate life.

It was August 2007 and Holly Campbell had just been hired for her first full-time teaching job and was excited to get started. She was in the cafeteria for orientation when a sheriff's officer walked in.

"You know those moments in the movies when the awful thing happens? The awful thing was happening to me. Jake (my son) was at home with Andy (my husband) and when he went to check on him in his bassinet, Jake had stopped breathing. Andy did CPR and called 9-1-1..." said Campbell.

Campbell said she met them at the hospital in Elmira where they did a CT scan but didn't really talk about the results. She said they were going to mercy flight him to Rochester, and they went to Strong Memorial that night.

"The next morning, they sat us down to tell us that the CT scan had revealed the worst-case scenario that Jake's brain was not going to recover. My husband and I looked at each other and said 'What about organ donation?'" said Campbell.

Campbell said people are surprised to hear they proactively asked about it, and she said it's something she and her husband talked about how that would be their wishes.

"We had this irreversible, awful circumstance in our lives and we knew there was only one thing that could provide us some solace and some bright spot of hope in the midst of all that, and that was organ donation. We knew we wanted to pursue organ donation and we were told right away that Jake would be a perfect candidate through tissue donation [with] his corneas and that he could either be a heart donor or he could donate his heart valves," said Campbell.

Though the decision was hard, Jake's heart went to a little boy named Beckham from Iowa, who was a perfect match.

"(Beckham had an enlarged heart.) They were a perfect match in every way. So, we started the process of grieving and letting go. The day Jake became a hero, we sat down with him and we were able to have him in our laps, still hooked up to machines, [and] say goodbye. The song that came to me to sing in that moment was 'For Good' from the musical Wicked. [It] has a line; 'You'll be with me, like a hand print on my heart,' and I thought it was perfect," said Campbell.

Campbell said later that day, Beckham received Jake's heart, "and it was like that heart wanted to beat because as soon as they transplanted his heart, it wanted to beat again."

She added, "Being able to share our story at events like this is so helpful because if just one person walks out of this hospital today and shares this story with someone who didn't consider organ donation before, then Jake will have made a difference."

David Webster is a heart transplant recipient and can attest to organ donation making a difference.

"[It] started with feeling symptoms of a cold and it continued to get worse. I came into the ER at Guthrie (Sayre) and they told me my heart was pumping at 15-percent when it needed to be pumping at 85-percent...As things moved on, I was given Heparin (which I'm allergic to) [and] started to clot everywhere. I was flown to [the] Cleveland Clinic and put on a transplant list and I was struggling through the [allergic reaction] where the clotting got so bad, that after I was stable, I was put on life-support," said Webster.

Webster said he was told he had one week on life-support left if he didn't receive a heart transplant.

"Fortunately, a miracle came in [2014]. One heart comes in once every eight weeks and I was one of the lucky ones. My donor Matthew wasn't on the organ donor list but Chris (Matthew's mom) stepped in and said Matthew is a kind individual. This is something he would've wanted. It was amazing when she listened to Matthew's heart for the first time. She kissed me on the cheek and said 'Thank you David for helping Matthew live on,'" said Webster.

Webster said in a way, it was healing for her to see Matthew was living through him. He said there aren't many days that go by he doesn't think about Matthew or the people at the Cleveland Clinic. Webster was told he was so sick at the time before his transplant, that he was moved to the top of the list, bypassing everyone on the list who was at the hospital at the time.

"I think one of the many reasons why I work so hard [to get] the word out about organ donation is because I haven't forgotten about those folks on the ninth floor at the Cleveland Clinic, and all those other [people who] are waiting for that life-saving gift," said Webster.

According to the Donate Life Organization, you can help up to 75 people through tissue donation and your organs can help save up to eight lives.