Penn Relays hold a special meaning for Jacob Hafer
Jacob Hafer was in a hurry on Friday. He wanted to get the Berks Catholic 4x100 relay team off to a fast start in its race at the 121st Penn Relays.
Jacob Hafer was in a hurry on Friday.
He wanted to get the Berks Catholic 4x100 relay team off to a fast start in its race at the 121st Penn Relays.
He also wanted to get back to the Reading area in time to prepare for his senior prom.
Hafer has a busy life.
A good life.
A miraculous life.
"Someone died so I could live," Hafer said in a stark and poignant description of his special place in this world as the recipient of a heart transplant.
Hafer, a thoughtful 19-year-old, will be the first to say that every day is special for him.
But some days are more special than others.
Friday was a red-letter day as Hafer got to run in the world's oldest and largest track and field carnival in the cool sunshine in the morning and attend Berks Catholic's prom at Stokesay Castle in Reading in the evening.
"I used to come to Children's [Hospital] and look over at Franklin Field and wonder what it would be like to be part of a sports event in there," Hafer said. "Now I'm here. It's amazing.
"There's people from all around the globe that are here. For me to be here and run in this event, it's an amazing experience."
Hafer underwent a heart transplant at the age of seven months at St. Christopher's Hospital in Philadelphia.
His mother, Kathy, said doctors mentioned 10 years as a fair estimate of his life expectancy.
"At the time, that was the longest that a pediatric heart-transplant recipient had lived," Kathy Hafer said.
Jacob Hafer takes anti-rejection medicine twice a day. He has regular checkups with doctors.
But otherwise, he makes no concessions to his condition, and he insists that nobody else does, either.
"No special treatment," Berks Catholic track coach Chris Lea said. "He gets treated like everybody else, criticized like everybody else. He's not the best we have but he works the hardest, always trying his best."
Hafer has an older brother, Tyler, a baseball player who is a student at Alvernia University in Reading. His younger sister Taylor is a lacrosse player and junior at Berks Catholic.
The 5-foot-8, 125-pound Hafer has always been involved in sports, from golf to CYO basketball to baseball and track and field.
"We even played [non-contact] football together one year," said Berks Catholic senior Daniel Gray, who has known Hafer since they were in first grade at Immaculate Conception elementary school. "He's just a normal kid. He always has been."
Kathy Hafer said the family has never treated her middle child as anything special but admits that "it's unbelievable to think he's running around with somebody else's heart inside him."
Jacob Hafer thinks he might want to be a high school history teacher. He has narrowed his college choices to La Salle and Kutztown and likely will make a decision in the next week.
The family knows the trip from Berks County to Philadelphia all too well. That's because of Jacob's regular treks to hospitals as well as his father Tom's visits for treatment for bile-duct cancer.
But Friday's road trip was about something else: No doctors, no screenings, no lab tests or medical examinations.
Instead, it was all fun in the sun as Hafer joined his teammates in the second heat of the small-schools 4x100 relays.
The sky was bright blue and a large crowd had begun to gather in the old stadium as Hafer ran the the opening leg. He burst from his crouch at the sound of the starter's gun and helped Berks Catholic, with Gray on the anchor, record a time of 48.42 seconds.
Afterward, Hafer sat with his buddies and watched a few more races in the front row on the southeast corner of the stands.
But he couldn't stay for long.
He wasn't nearly finished with his Friday.
"You always have that little voice in your head telling you that you can't do something," Jacob Hafer said. "But you can't listen to it. You have to believe you can do anything.
"With practice and hard work and determination, you can get anywhere, even the Penn Relays."
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