Community Corner

Murrieta Man Celebrating 10 Years of Liver Transplant

The following story was submitted on behalf of Mike Torretti:

Mike Torretti of Murrieta celebrated a very special anniversary June 27: it was 10 years to the day of his liver transplant at Loma Linda University Medical Center. 

Torretti, who was a nurse in the  late 1970s, probably contracted hepatitis B from a returning Vietnam soldier when he worked at a Veterans’ Administration hospital in St. Louis. At the time, there were no precautions and no vaccines against hepatitis as there are now. According to Torretti, the infectious virus slowly ate away at his liver unknowingly until he bled out causing liver failure in 1999. 

After several years as a nurse, Torretti returned to school, where he studied to become a psychiatric nurse. After his years as nurse, Torretti got his master’s degree in theology at Loyola University in Orleans and worked as a lay minister in the Catholic Church. For seven years—he recently retired—Torretti worked at St. Martha Catholic Church in Murrieta. For the previous six years prior, he worked at St. Peter’s in Fallbrook.

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“I feel blessed. God saved my life and I want to give back to others,” Torretti said.

To that end, he and his wife had four biological children and then adopted four more, all siblings whose mother had been addicted to crystal meth.

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“I want to show people how organ donation saved my life and I’ve been trying to save kids’ lives.”

Torretti proudly notes that he was the 205th transplant at Loma Linda. They even gave him a T-shirt with his  number. What was once major surgery 10 years ago is now done arthroscopically.

“A life-saving transplant makes you think about how you can pay it forward, effect someone else’s life and that of their families.” 

Torretti had no special celebrations in honor of his transplant anniversary.

“I plan to thank God and pray,” he said. 


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