Millions of Californians are willing to donate organs, but relatively few do. Here's why

The scene at OneLegacy in Asuza on a recent Friday morning would have been familiar to anyone who's been in a hospital intensive care unit. Three adults were tucked into hospital beds, still and apparently asleep, with ventilators and other machines of artificial life doing the work that their bodies couldn't do. If you didn't know better, you'd think all the tubes and wires and boxes and screens were designed to save the lives of these patients, but it was too late for that. Instead, the machines were keeping oxygenated blood circulating through soon-to-be-donated organs of three people who had recently been declared brain dead. OneLegacy, you see, is not a hospital. And the kidneys, livers and other organs in those three bodies could save the lives of up to 24 people.