WATERLOO, Iowa — A California couple is glad that their son’s heart is living on three years after his death inside of an Iowa woman.

The two families got a chance to meet each other on Friday.

Vicky Patino of Murrieta, Calif., used a stethoscope at Friday’s meeting to listen to her son’s heart beating on.

“My son still lives, he lives in you,” she said to Emily Kachulis.

Vicky Patino said she feels close to Kachulis now because of the organ donation.

“I miss my son so much, but now, I have a daughter,” said Vicky Patino.

Kachulis spent two months in intensive care at a Rochester hospital in 2011 waiting for a transplant before getting the news that Raul Patino’s organs were a match.

Then 22-year-old Raul Patino fell off a party bus in Minnesota. Four different people received organs from Patino.

Vicky Patino said it was easy to decide to donate her son’s organs because she wanted him to live on in some form.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said more than 120 million Americans are signed up to be organ donors, but the need is so great that an average of 18 people die each day while waiting for transplants.

More information about organ donation is available online at www.organdonor.gov.