ROCKFORD (WREX) — In the United States, more than 100 thousand people are waiting for organ donations, about 60 percent of whom come from multicultural communities. August is National Minority Donor Awareness Month and encourages people of all backgrounds to register as donors.

Marion Shuck was on a bike ride with her husband three years ago when the unthinkable happened. Reginald Shuck died of a heart attack while riding next to her. Marion Shuck works for Gift of Hope and advocates for organ donation, but at the time she had to make her own decisions.

“Even though I work at Gift of Hope, even though I was a wife at the time, I became a donor woman then,” Shuck said. “Then I became someone who had to make a decision about donation. Thank God my husband and I had always had the conversation about donorship.”

While transplants can be successful regardless of the ethnicity of the donor and recipient, Shuck says it’s better to have a wide variety of donors.

“The chance of longer-term survival may be greater if the donor and recipient share a similar genetic background,” explains Shuck.

But it is not always easy to convince people in certain communities to become donors.

“It’s important to understand that people of color, black people, Latinos and people of color have a healthy distrust of the health care system, and rightly so,” she said. “Awful things have happened in the last 40, 50, 60 years that would help people to be suspicious.”

To counter that mistrust, Shuck wants people to start talking about organ donation.

“Start the conversation with your loved ones today,” Shuck insists. “Don’t wait for a tragic circumstance to arise.”

Shuck has lived through the tragedy of the loss of her husband, but she knows that his legacy lives on in the people who helped his donations.