Midwest families forever connected through life and loss

By Cameron Montemayor

Nearly 450 miles away from home, Chris and Mike Tonn stood inside the Robidoux Row Museum on a late July evening surrounded by a group of people they had just met for the first time, but one they somehow already felt so close to.

With the help of a stethoscope and with their emotions on their sleeve, the two Minnesota parents took turns listening carefully to a long-awaited and emotional sound, the sound of their late son’s lifesaving impact on a beloved grandfather and his family.

On July 29, two years will have passed since their only son Eric died after a motorcycle accident on Interstate 94 in Douglas County, Minnesota. He was 36 years old.

Eric Tonn was born at Mather Air Force Base in Rancho Cordova, California, on July 30, 1985. Eric graduated from Ridgewater Technical College before taking a job with Fortune 500 company 3M. Between his dedication to work, fearless attitude and taste for adventure, his parents were amazed at the man he became.

“He’d say, ‘Some of these people, Dad, where I work … they don’t really seem like they want to take a chance or go do anything else,” said Mike, a longtime Air Force veteran. “Instead of saying, ‘Yeah, someday I’ll do that,’ he actually did that.”

But it was Eric’s decision to register as an organ donor that would ultimately have a profound impact on many lives, and families, across the country.

“We wanted them to take everything they could and use that to help as many people as we could because that’s what Eric would want,” Chris, Eric’s mother, said tearfully.

With the help of LifeSource, a Minnesota-based organ procurement organization, five of Eric’s major organs were able to be recovered and used to help others, along with other vital tissues.

“But we found out that somebody could even live from this tragedy that happened,” Mike said. “And this family was located in Missouri.”

At that emotional July gathering in St. Joseph, Union Star resident Rick Consolver, his wife Janis and numerous family and friends huddled around them, their emotions just as high to finally meet the parents of the man who kept their family together.

Rick was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis in 2022, a severe lung disease that occurs when tissue becomes damaged and scarred.

He remembers being told by doctors that he had just three to four months to live if he wasn’t able to get a lung transplant. At one point, his lungs were so weak that they had to utilize two large oxygen tanks to try and maintain his breathing as they desperately waited for a match.

“I went home and started to make my, you know, my finances and everything in order and so we went and we made my funeral arrangements,” he said.

Hopes were raised after the pair embarked on a four-hour drive to Iowa for a lung transplant in 2022 after learning of a match. But the trip ended in heartbreak for the Consolvers after the lungs were discovered to have a mass on them.

Eric’s motorcycle accident happened just weeks later. He was pronounced dead at the Hennepin County Medical Center on July 29, 2022. Three days later on Aug. 1, Rick was undergoing double-lung transplant surgery thanks to highly coordinated efforts from organ recovery specialists, trauma teams, surgeons and other medical professionals.

“It was a nine-hour surgery and I was out of there in five hours. Everything just went like crazy good,” Rick said. “Everything went just like God made it. And then I walked out of there in 11 days, no oxygen.”

Doctors aptly gave him the nickname “Rockstar Rick.”

In the eyes of his family, his rapid recovery was one of several miracles they witnessed and heard throughout their journey that brought them and the Tonns together.

“He went from death’s door one day to a miracle that he was never sick the next day. It’s just like a God intervention,” Janis said. “God has put them and our lives together.”

If it wasn’t for emergency responders already traveling right behind Eric — and the work they were able to provide on the scene almost immediately — the odds of successfully recovering his lungs to help save Rick’s life would have been decidedly lower.

Over the course of their lives, Rick and Janis have done countless work for people and communities, from St. Joseph to Union Star. Their caring and generous acts have allowed them to make more friends and connections than they could have imagined.

But their newfound relationship with Chris and Mike has been unlike any other, as they learned an already profound and emotional connection extended even deeper.

What the Tonns didn’t know at first was that Rick and Janis knew all too well the devastation of losing a child.

In 2002, Rick and Janis’ 24-year-old son Ryan was killed in a motorcycle accident. His death inspired his parents to create the annual Ride for Ryan motorcycle ride and benefit event in his honor, an event that helped raise more than $200,000 in scholarships for students over its 15-year run.

“They can understand what it’s like to have emotions at 2 in the morning or 2 in the afternoon. Happy, sad, resentful, joyous, not joyous,” Mike said. “Sometimes you don’t even know why you could be angry.”

“Chris and I, we text every day now, every day. And we have a special bond,” Janis said. “We know what they’re going through. Their loss was such a gain for us. It’s just hard to, you know, because we know they’re hurting and we hurt for them.”

From the fateful first phone call Mike made to the Consolvers, and subsequent follow-up conversations, the two families were stunned to learn of the parallels between their lives. And the chance to connect was something they weren’t sure would ever happen.

“It normally takes a year for the donor companies to give them the letter,” Rick said. “When we left the hospital … we’ve just been waiting, and it’s just unbelievable.”

As the two families developed a relationship over the phone, there was one particular discussion about Rick’s recovery that struck a chord with Mike and Chris.

“He said, ‘Yeah now the kids and the grandkids and I, we’ll be in the living room and they can jump on my back again,’” Mike said. “That really has uplifted myself as well as my wife, Chris, that this family can have a life together again.”

Mike and Chris are forever thankful for the July gathering, the healing it provided and the everlasting connections they now have with the Consolvers.

The experiences have given many of them a newfound perspective on life.

“Today is the day that you’re here on this Earth, and I now more than ever, even though I’ve been through a combat zone situation in the service, I think more and more of it every day that I really want to live life fully like Eric seemed to really do in his life,” Mike said.

“We’re just so glad that something good could come out of something so bad,” Chris said.