Family means everything to Courtney Chaires. That's why when her mother Lisa passed away, it took a toll.

“In August of 2018, we got the phone call that she had gone into cardiac arrest, for as long as I can remember, she has always wanted to be an organ donor," Chaires said.

Lisa was able to save the lives of two people with her organ donation.

“She's kind of like living on in other people," Chaires said.

According to the Center for Donation and Transplant, New York State ranks 49th of 50 in registered eligible donors but has the third highest need for donors in the country. One New Yorker dies every 15 hours waiting for a life-saving transplant.

There are several myths about organ donation that stop people from signing up.

“Number one, people think, 'I'm too old to be a donor.' Actually, age does not matter. Our oldest donor was 95," says Laura Fissette, a senior hospital and community services specialist with the Center for Donation and Transplant.

She says it's not against any organized religion in the U.S. to become an organ donor, and many people think if you’re an organ donor, hospitals won’t do everything they can to save your life, which she says is not true.

“The way that we look up registrations is we search all of the electrical databases to find out if someone is a donor and the only people who have access to that are organ procurement organizations and the health departments. So your doctors don’t even know if you’re a registered donor," Fissette said.

Overall, Chaires says the process was made easier thanks to all of the support she had, but she says there needs to be more awareness about what organ donation is.

“So many more families could have their loved ones if there were more people that were registered as donors. The person has passed away. It's their one last act of kindness," Chaires said.