Soccer goalie Korinne Shroyer came home from eighth grade one day about five years ago.  Navigating around her father's closet, she picked up her father's gun and proceeded to fire a bullet into her skull.

This is the story of how that tragedy blossomed into something positive. 

Korinne was not a likely suicide candidate.  In her Lynchburg, VA school, she was a popular kid.  When she started feeling depressed for no tangible reason, her parents took her to a therapist - and Korinne was given Paxil - a drug that has had some potential association with suicidal thoughts.

Korinne's father, Kevin, was devastated by her death.  He was best friends with his daughter and they shared a passion for running and exercise.  He and Korinne used to go jogging togehter several times each week.

After Korinne's death, Kevin was unable to put his running shoes on, citing the painful memories it incited.

At the time of her death, Kevin and Korinne's mom, Kristie, found the strength and vision to share Korinne's organs as gifts for those who needed them to live.

Korinne's beautiful green eyes would go in one direction, her warm heart another, her kidneys still another. Her liver and her pancreas were shared with waiting recipients, and her two strong lungs--ones she played the saxophone with--went to Georgia man who very close to death.

This man, named Len, was a runner and swimmer and nonsmoker.  He found one day that he was entirely out of breath and couldn't even walk.  His genetic emphysema, also known as Alpha-1, had taken full hold of him and a lung transplant was his only hope for survival.

Len was on his fifth year on the waiting list and the quality of his life was miserable just prior to Korinne's death.  He received those two young lungs quickly thereafter in an operation at the University of Virginia Medical Center.

Now 48, Len improved from 15% lung function to far above average for his age. He truly found his second wind and his second life. He was so grateful, he wrote Korinne's parents to say thank you. And that letter changed everybody's lives.

Korinne's parents wrote back, and Len wanted to meet them.  They all agreed and the bittersweet, emotional gathering took place.  After sharing stories and photos of Korinne's life, Korinne's mom asked, "Len? Can I ask you a favor?" She walked over and stood before him. "Anything," Len said.

"Can I put my hands on your chest for just a second?"

And she stood there, crying, as she felt her dead daughter breathe.

AFter meeting Len, Kevin found the strength to start to run again. And someone had a great idea. Why didn't he and Len run together? So they did. They ran an 8K together, step for step, next to each other. One man's overflowing joy coming straight from the other's bottomless sorrow.

That whole run, Kevin never shut up. It was so unlike him that, at the end, Geiger asked him, "Why?"

"I had to," Kevin admitted, "because every time there was silence, I could hear Korinne breathing."

Next they ran a half marathon, then a full one. By then, though, the steroids that Geiger had taken for years just to stay alive had damaged most of his joints, and he was running on two artificial hips. The best he could do was race-walk. At the 17-mile mark his hips were screaming. But he refused to quit.

It took them six hours and 25 minutes--with Shroyer matching him step by agonizing step--but they finished, hands clasped together, the three of them.

Kevin and Kristie aren't whole yet, but they're getting on with their lives. Geiger, meanwhile, is relishing his. He met a woman, Christina, married her, and they named their first baby after Korinne--Ava Corinne. Sometimes he stares at her, awed. "I know that without Korinne, I'm not here today and neither is Ava Corinne."

Sometimes life just takes your breath away, doesn't it?