A Bittersweet Gift Gives New Life in Death

By Katie McFadden

On February 2, Robin Neuer of Broad Channel, known by all accounts as someone who lived to help others, died unexpectedly. But in her final act, she did what she lived for, giving four people the ultimate gift, a second chance at life, by donating her organs. And in a bittersweet twist on the tragedy came new hope for a beloved local bartender who had been waiting for a kidney transplant for six years—Mike McGee.

At 48 years old, Neuer was living life to the fullest, spending most of her time giving to others in the ways she could. “She truly lived to help others. Her entire life, whether it was her siblings, animals, random people on the street, that is just what she did every day. She gave herself to help others. She had been that way since she was a child,” Robin’s sister, Donna Bassetti, said. One way was through caring for family, from her parents, John and Debbie, and beyond. One of her greatest loves was caring for her niece and nephews. “She adored them. She was like a second mom to her niece and nephews. I have a daughter and son, and she lived next door and was a part of their lives every day,” Bassetti said. She had a strong bond with her twin brother, Bobby, and adored his son just as much, even though they live in South Carolina. She also adored her longtime soulmate, Vinny Turchio, and treated his grandkids as her own. “They were the little loves of her life,” Bassetti said.

Another way was through extensive volunteer work. Neuer had volunteered as a dispatcher for the Broad Channel Volunteer Fire Department, an organization much of her family is involved in, and spent most of her time volunteering with the VFW in Broad Channel. “She found great joy in that. She was proud of my father having spent time in Vietnam with the U.S. Army, so she loved to help the vets, going to St. Albans during the holidays with gift bags or having all the vets come to the VFW Post, cooking them meals, hosting St. Patrick’s Day, summer barbecues, etc. She loved to host them and thank them for their service to our country,” Bassetti said.

On the morning of Saturday, January 24, Robin was getting ready to host an event at the VFW, a memorial for a member. She had just returned from visiting her brother in South Carolina the night before, getting home in time to beat the incoming snowstorm. As she was getting dressed, Neuer had an asthma attack and called her father, John, saying she needed to go to the hospital. Within walking distance of her home, her father and boyfriend arrived within a minute or two and found Robin upstairs using her nebulizer, but it wasn’t effective, and her breathing issues became worse. As they got her bags and jacket ready to take her to an urgent care, Neuer collapsed, prompting a call to 911 instead. As medics arrived, they revived Robin and transported her to St. John’s by ambulance, where she suffered from cardiac arrest again and was once again revived. But the damage had been done. “She was without oxygen for an extended time, maybe 12 to 15 minutes, which is a very long time and can cause brain damage. At that point, she wasn’t brain dead, but 95% of her brain didn’t work because she had gone so long without oxygen,” Bassetti said. “There was no coming back from it.”

As the unimaginable realization set in, Robin’s family was presented with an option. “The option to donate her organs was brought to us, and as soon as they brought it up, me, my mom, dad, brother and Vinny were there, and we said this is a no-brainer. Giving herself to others is truly who she was,” Bassetti said. “So ultimately, we agreed to it because we knew there was no coming back with the extent of her brain damage.”

Bassetti said Live on NY spoke to the family about their options, including direct donation to someone they knew. “It’s something we never knew about. They gave us forms, and at first, none of us could think of someone we knew, but we had time to think about it, so we set the forms aside. Then Vinny, Robin’s boyfriend, thought of Mike McGee and said, ‘I think McGee still needs a kidney.’ We all looked around at each other and said, ‘someone, get him on the phone,’” Bassetti said.

Mike McGee, a Rockaway resident known to many around the community from longtime bartending jobs at Healy’s, and then the Rockaway Beach Golf Club and the North Channel Yacht Club in Broad Channel, was told in 2020 that he would need a kidney transplant, just a month after he and his bride, Suzanne, had a virtual Covid quarantine wedding. “I knew something was wrong when, during Covid, my right leg started to swell, and my wife, Sue, and I did a Covid test at urgent care, and we noticed my leg was swollen. We called Dr. Lee’s office and did tele-med and she said come in. She did a full blood test, and it was Memorial Day weekend, we were social distancing and having a barbecue at a friend’s house for the holiday, and I looked at my phone and saw I was getting a call from Dr. Lee’s office on Memorial Day. I knew that wasn’t good,” McGee recalled. His inkling was right. “She said, ‘I think you’re in kidney failure, you need to come right away.’ Tuesday, I got up, and as I’m driving to her office, she calls me again and said, ‘Don’t even come here, go to a nephrologist.’ I was already in the parking lot, so she told me to come in, gave me a referral, and said go. My wife was on a Zoom meeting for work, and I told her they’re telling me I’m in kidney failure. She disconnected, and we went to a nephrologist, Dr. Chopra. He did tests and told me the one kidney I had was functioning at less than 7%. The other was completely disintegrated.” McGee was diagnosed with end-stage renal disease and was told he would need a kidney transplant.

Shortly after, McGee’s life as he knew it changed drastically as he was put on a transplant list and began dialysis three days a week. The disruption made daily joys difficult, like making date plans with his wife or friends, and making vacations near impossible, which McGee learned the hard way. “When I did treatments, I’d be there for four hours from nine in the morning, and I’d get home at 1:30 and would be shot the rest of the day. It’s taxing on the body,” he said. “We went to Key West for my wife and friend’s 50th birthday, and I thought, it’s only four days, I’ll be fine. By the time I was coming home, I could barely walk through the airport. I had pushed the limits.”

As if dialysis wasn’t difficult enough, McGee suffered additional major medical scares. “Initially, they tried to make a fistula to go through my wrist for the dialysis, but it didn’t work fast enough, so I was put on a temporary catheter in the chest while the fistula was developing, and it was in too long. So I got a bacterial infection of the aortic valve, and a piece of the valve broke off and went to my brain and gave me a stroke in 2021,” McGee said. Fortunately, he was able to get most mobility back except for some feeling in a few fingers. But it was later discovered that since the bacteria had been eating away at his aortic valve, he had to have a heart valve replacement.

As additional obstacles grew, hope started to fade for a transplant. What was initially thought to be caused by undiagnosed high blood pressure, McGee later found that he had a family history of kidney issues, so it may have been hereditary, ruling out some family members as a match. There was hope at one point. “About three or four years ago, I had a living donor, but as she went through screenings, they discovered she had a heart condition that no one knew about, and she was disqualified,” McGee said. “It was getting to the point where I accepted that I was going to spend the rest of my life on dialysis. The average life span on dialysis is 10 to 12 years. I was starting my sixth year.”

A few weeks ago, McGee had just started his shift at the Rockaway Beach Golf Club when he got a call that would renew hope, amid a tragic reason. A few days before, like many, McGee had heard the tragic news of what happened to Robin, as her boyfriend, Vinny, shared the news with fellow North Channel Yacht Club members. “Her brother Bobby and her were a year ahead of me in Beach Channel High School. We all knew each other from Rockaway and the bars. I saw Robin a lot more when I got involved in the Yacht Club,” he said.

But McGee never expected what would happen next. “Early Friday evening, January 30, I saw Robin’s brother and asked how she was, and by Friday night, Donna reached out and said, ‘We don’t know her blood type, we don’t know if she’s a match, but this is the info we need from you,’” McGee said. “I was shaking. It threw me for a loop. I didn’t know how to feel because it was horrible that Robin was gone, but at the same time, I was going to possibly get a kidney and get back to a normal life.”

McGee and Robin immediately went through testing. “Saturday morning, I got a call from my hospital, Weill Cornell Presbyterian, and they said prepare to be there all weekend. If it’s a match, you’re good to go. By Monday, they told me it looked like we were a match,” McGee said.

“We found out within 36 hours that it was a match for Mike,” Bassetti said. “Not through the organ donation company, but we found out through mutual friends. When we found out it was a match for Mike, my family cheered. And the nurses cheered with us because they saw how happy it made us knowing Robin would be helping someone we truly knew,” Bassetti said.

Later that Monday, February 2, Robin was given an honor walk. “The honor walk in the hospital was truly something beautiful. All of the clergy from St. Mary’s prayed over Robin, and our family was there to witness that. They prepared her for surgery and walked her out of the ICU. We followed to the doors of the operating room, and all of the staff and doctors at St. John’s, the paramedics from the ambulance, all lined the hall as we passed. The attention and care and everything we went through during this horrible process was nothing short of exceptional at St. John’s, to the end. It was a beautiful moment and we truly found comfort in knowing it was the end for Robin but the beginning for so many others.”

Altogether, Robin was able to donate her heart and her liver to unknown recipients and both of her kidneys, one to a member of Robin’s boyfriend’s family, and one to McGee, giving new life to four different families.

Eight days before his 48th birthday, McGee was given the gift of a chance at a normal life. Robin and her family’s gift still has McGee at a loss for words as he continues to recover from the successful surgery, in quarantine for the next three months, and on antirejection and antiviral meds for the rest of his life. “I don’t have the words. I’ll be forever in their debt,” McGee said. “I feel so sorry that they lost Robin. She was a sweetheart of a girl. She was just amazing, and her final act, through donating her organs she helped four people get on with their lives. She was an amazing person, and even through this, she is still helping people,” McGee said.

Knowing that Robin was able to help others as her final act brings a sense of comfort to the Neuer family. “It’s a surreal thing. We left the hospital seeing all of the organ donation teams waiting outside, and it gave us peace knowing that she changed the life for a few people and saved others,” Bassetti said. “It’s who she was. As soon as this came up in conversation, we knew we had to do this because it’s what she would want to do, helping others. If she was able to make that decision for herself, she would have done that. Robin was always trying to find the good in the bad, no matter what the situation was. When Mike’s wife, Suzanne, came to the funeral and thanked my parents for making that decision, it brought us even more peace knowing that Mike’s quality of life is going to be better because of Robin’s gift.”

To learn about becoming an organ donor after death, see: www.liveonny.org