Edible Apple

In late March, Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the stage with Arnold Schwarzenegger at the Lucile Packard’s Children’s Hospital to help drum up support for a proposed bill in California that would require individuals receiving their license to indicate whether or not they would like to be organ donors. As it stands now, drivers in California have to take pro-active steps to sign up as organ donors.

Addressing the crowd, Jobs was uncharacteristically open about his liver transplant, and recounted just how close to dying he actually was.

“I was almost one of the ones that died waiting for a liver in California last year,” Jobs said, ”there were simply not enough livers in California to go around, and my doctors here advised me to enroll in a transplant program in Memphis, where the supply-demand ratio of livers is more favorable than it is in California.”

“I was very fortunate,” Jobs continued, “Many others died waiting to receive one.”

Earlier this week, a Silicon Alley Insider reader named James emailed Jobs to thank him for his efforts in spreading awareness about the importance of organ donations and rallying up support for the proposed law.

His email reads:

Thank you, you’re awesome.

I lost my girlfriend on April 23, 2008 from melanoma which spread rapidly to her liver, 48 hours after we found out it spread to her liver she sadly passed away….she was only 24 and I think about her every day. I am so grateful you took time out to do this. My girlfriend and I are from Cupertino, since childhood, and it’s really nice to see the hometown hero take time out to do this.

Once again, thank you so much.

Sincerely,

James

Jobs soon replied,

Your most welcome, James. I’m sorry about your girlfriend. Life is fragile.

Steve

Sent from my iPad

SAI acknowledges the grammatical error in Jobs’ email, but after investigating the headers, they’re confident that this email did, in fact, come from Jobs himself.

In an email to SAI, James explains why chose to make his correspondence with Jobs public:

I was hesitant to share this email from Steve, but ultimately decided it was a good idea, because everyone focuses on Steve the CEO, but forgets there is someone else, a normal person who does care about good causes. I emailed Steve thanking him for his support at the Lucile Packard’s Children’s Hospital in regards to encouraging organ donations. The goal of the event was to unveil a new California Bill (SB 1395) which requires the California Department of Motor Vehicles to ask one simple question to driver license applicants, “Do you want to become an organ donor?”. Even though the email was sent on the day of Apple’s earnings call, Steve still replied. The reason why I made this email public is because if one person decides to become an organ donor for some personal reason after reading this post or would like to get involved in raising the awareness for organ donations, then it’s worth releasing this email to the public and I would like to think Steve wouldn’t mind. For more information on organ donations or becoming an organ donor please visit www.OrganDonor.gov.