Scout and LoganOur dear friend Scout (Vicki) Valentine can breathe thanks to a miracle. The miracle that skilled surgeons, with God’s help, can take the working, useful lungs from a person who has left this life and place them in a person whose work on this earth is not done. The further miracle that the timing of the donor’s passing coincided with the hour of Scout’s greatest need.

Scout received her new lungs in the very early hours of June 8, 2013. The journey to that day began nearly two years earlier when Scout developed a nasty cough. It was diagnosed as pneumonia and treated as such. It seemingly was on its way to resolution until several months later when it became apparent there were some lingering symptoms.

Over the next several months diagnostic tests were run and Scout fluctuated between feeling normal and feeling just a bit off. The “off” didn’t stop her from being active. She continued to run several days a week and take riding lessons which she had begun in 2010. She had made her debut in the hunt field in early 2011 at a Red Rock Hounds joint meet in Santa Ynez and had become quite hooked on riding.