On many occasions, Steve Hilfiker has imagined the midpoint of Elton John’s concert at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte on Sunday night unfolding like this:
After the legendary musician finishes his performance of 1970’s “Take Me to the Pilot,” he rises from his piano to introduce the next song in the setlist, and turns his attention to Hilfiker. John acknowledges the Fort Myers, Fla., man as a heart-transplant recipient, and Hilfiker’s guest, Vannessa Blais of Fayetteville, as the sister of the man who gave him that heart.
Then the singer invites the pair on stage, they sit down next to him at the piano, and Blais uses a stethoscope to listen to her brother’s heart beating in Hilfiker’s chest as John launches into the next song.
It is — fittingly — “Someone Saved My Life Tonight.”
“I mean, if he wants to do that, we’ll do it,” Hilfiker says, chuckling. But the 56-year-old father of four knows the chances of his dreams becoming reality are remote.
At the same time, that hasn’t stopped him from trying to orchestrate a moment he thinks would be the next best thing.
He will be flying in from Florida Sunday afternoon to watch the stadium show from the fifth row with Blais, just over two years after receiving a heart that belonged to her younger brother. They will be bringing a stethoscope, which Blais will press to Hilfiker’s chest during “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” which is expected to be the ninth song of the night.
They’ll be wearing red T-shirts representing the foundation Hilfiker was inspired to create by his journey as a transplant recipient, now named for Blais’s brother. They’ll be toting homemade signs.
And maybe, just maybe, Hilfiker and Blais get the special shout-out they’ve been working on trying to get since their long-gestating and overwhelmingly emotional first meeting last month.
‘I thank you, so much...’
The rare condition that led to Hilfiker needing a new heart went undiagnosed until it was almost too late.
It’s a complex ailment, but in the simplest terms: He spent five years experiencing confounding symptoms until doctors at the University of Rochester in New York determined — in March of 2019 — he was suffering from cardiac sarcoidosis, which involves groups of immune cells creating small areas of inflammation in the heart.
A months-long regimen of steroid treatments was successful in driving his condition into remission; however, the damage to his heart had been done.
Hilfiker’s heart failed at the end of July in 2020. For three days, the only thing keeping him alive was an intra-aortic balloon pump, a device that helps the heart pump blood. Finally, on Aug. 3, doctors found a heart that was a perfect match, and performed the transplant surgery the same day.
Shortly before Thanksgiving, having essentially made a full recovery, Hilfiker wrote a letter to the at-that-point-anonymous family of his donor through HonorBridge, the North Carolina-based organization that coordinates organ and tissue donations within the state.
“He must have been strong,” Hilfiker wrote, “and we must have been similar in many ways, because the surgery and recovery have been very successful. Due to his strength and gift, and the skill of the doctors, I am well.
“If you ever want to correspond or meet someday, I would welcome the opportunity to express my gratitude to any family representative or your entire family. In this season or down the road, I would love to personally thank you. With great emotion, I thank you, so much…”
It would be more than five months before he would get a response from Blais. After that, he had to wait another 16 months for Blais to finally agree to meet him.
A powerful revelation
Her brother had died July 31, 2020 — so unexpectedly, and so young, at the age of just 31.
He had not designated himself as an organ donor, but before he was taken off life support, Blais signed the paperwork. “That was something that my stepmom had brought to my attention,” she says, “and I was like, ‘Let’s do it. I want something positive to come out of my brother’s life. So let’s do it.’ ...
“And we were able to save four lives.”
One person received his liver; one person got his right kidney; another was given his pancreas and his left kidney. Hilfiker, of course, got his heart.
When Blais received his letter that fall, and read about his desire to connect, she felt conflicted. She and her brother had been close all their lives. She just wasn’t sure her heart could take the complicated emotions that would come with meeting the man who now had a key piece of her brother inside of him.
But in April of 2021, Hilfiker received a reply from Blais to the letter he had sent the previous fall.
“I welcome the opportunity to meet you as well,” she wrote. “My family is in NC but we love Florida so it is a wonderful reason to visit.”
She also revealed her brother’s name:
Daniel.
Hilfiker was immediately struck by this. It sent him looking for a cellphone video he’d shot at an Elton John concert in Orlando in March 2019, and he found it. As John performed, a video was projected on the big screen behind the stage of a young man lying on a table. Partway through, the man appears to morph into an older version of himself.
The song being sung? His 1973 hit “Daniel.”
His new heart racing, Hilfiker quickly looked up the lyrics on the internet.
Daniel my brother you are older than me
Do you still feel the pain of the scars that won’t heal?
Your eyes have died but you see more than I
Daniel you’re a star in the face of the sky
A man on a mission
As it turned out, Blais wasn’t ready yet, emotionally.
Hilfiker was advised to not put too much pressure on her and that, generally, families need time to grieve. So he kept praying for another response, or a notification that she had signed the consent form that would release her contact information to him — but such correspondence didn’t materialize in 2021.
In the meantime, though, Hilfiker was finding a new purpose in life. For one, he created the Foundation for Early Detection and Sarcoidosis Awareness, with its main goal being to support legislative and research efforts.
On top of that, after more than three decades as a corporate executive, he gave up running his engineering firm, hooked up with a filmmaker named Nicholas Markart, and started using his own retirement savings to produce a documentary on his experience as a heart transplant survivor.
It would begin as a short, with the plan being to eventually have it evolve into a feature-length film built around interviews with physicians, heart-transplant recipients, donor families, and — possibly — thoughts from a few celebrities.
Like, maybe Elton John.
In fact, this past April, Hilfiker was in the first and second rows at John’s shows in Orlando and Miami, respectively, holding a sign that read “Heart Transplant From Daniel.” His pie-in-the-sky dream was that John would take an interest in learning more, and wind up becoming an advocate for organ donation and a part of the film.
(Hilfiker says both times, he clearly saw John look at his sign, but so far, he hasn’t gotten more than a smile out of the singer.)
Even without John, however, the project is making some waves. In May, Markart’s six-minute short — “Stoneheart: An Undying Gift” — was screened at the 2022 Cannes International Film Festival, presented as part of its “Emerging Filmmakers Showcase.”
And just recently, they shot a pivotal scene.
On Aug. 1, at long last, Blais signed the consent form. They met two weeks later at Arnette Park in her hometown of Fayetteville.
With Blais’s blessing, Hilfiker brought Markart with a camera. He also brought his stethoscope, and when she put it to his chest and began to listen, she wept.
Asked to recall what she was feeling in that moment, Blais replies, softly, her voice shaking: “Just that ‘my bubba’ is still here. He may not physically be here, but he’s still here.” She explains that she couldn’t say “brother” right when she was little — “so he was ‘my bubba.’ But I was just so glad to see that he will live on through Steve, and that Steve is a genuinely good person, just like my brother was.”
Since that day, the two have spoken at least twice a week, Blais says — and, in short order, Hilfiker has turned her into an Elton John fan.
‘It was meant for my brother’
“I had actually never heard the song ‘Daniel’ until Steve told me to listen to it,” says the 35-year-old Blais.
“My husband was like, ‘What? You don’t know this song?’ ... So he played it for me.” And now? “I feel like that song was written for my brother, maybe years before he was even born — but still it was meant for my brother.”
Unfortunately, “Daniel” isn’t on the list of songs John is performing on this leg of his “Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour.” But a song called “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” seems like a pretty solid alternate choice to both Hilfiker and Blais.
For Hilfiker’s part, he has been determined to catch the singer’s attention ahead of time, to try to get John to recognize them and to mention organ donation as well as Hilfiker’s foundation, which recently added Daniel’s name to it. (It’s now, officially, The Daniel Foundation for Organ Donation and Sarcoidosis Awareness.)
They’ve been tagging him in social media posts. He’s sent letters to John’s publicists and agents. He’s trying to pull favors any way he can; for instance, Hilfiker’s fourth cousin is fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger, and he says he made contact with Tommy’s brother Andy, who apparently agreed to see if he could do something to help get the message to John through Tommy.
At the show, Hilfiker will hold a “Heart Transplant From Daniel” sign again. Blais’s will read “Daniel’s My Brother.”
If they’re unsuccessful here in Charlotte, they plan to keep trying.
Hilfiker just this week also bought himself and Blais front-row seats for John’s Sept. 22 Atlanta show, and second-row seats for his concert in Nashville on Oct. 2.
But even if things don’t work out quite the way they hope, Blais is at peace, for two reasons.
One, “I think no matter whether we get him to back it or not, I think that it’s still gonna impact those that are around us,” she says, “and if it makes impact on at least one person, then we’re headed in the right direction. I can’t ask for much more than that.”
Two — and far more meaningfully — is this:
“I feel like his heart went to the right person,” she says.
“It was an exact match.”
This story was originally published September 14, 2022 3:26 PM.
