Alicia DeLapp and her husband had just discovered that their 18-month-old daughter, Amanda, was brain dead when they were asked to consider donating her organs for transplantation.

That was in January 1984, when organ transplantation was not nearly as successful nor universally accepted by the medical community as it is today. But the DeLapps said yes anyway.

"It was the right thing to do," Ms. DeLapp, 48, of Mayfield, Ky., said yesterday, in Pittsburgh for the National Kidney Foundation 2008 U.S. Transplant Games. "That way someone else could have their child and not have to go through the same thing we were going through."

Amanda's two kidneys went to a 20-year-old man the DeLapps never found anything else about. But they learned almost immediately that Amanda's liver went to a 2¹/₂-year-old girl from Florida named Trine Engebretsen.

That's because the operation by pioneer transplant surgeon Dr. Thomas Starzl at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh was one of the first in the nation on an infant, and came at a time when Dr. Starzl and others finally were finding the right drug cocktail to conquer organ rejection. It was such big news that the two families met via satellite for interviews on "The Today Show" while the surgery was in progress.

The following Christmas, the Engebretsens sent Amanda's grandparents a photo of their now healthy toddler. They passed it on to Ms. DeLapp, who has kept it by her bed with pictures of her three children, Amanda, daughter Keisha, 23, and son, Jared, 20, ever since.

The Engebretsens and Amanda's grandparents corresponded for a while before they lost touch. Trine Engebretsen tried to contact the DeLapps through organ procurement organizations, and Keisha DeLapp sought information about her on the Internet. But there was no further contact between them until Keisha posted a MySpace friend request listing for Trine in mid-April.

A few days later, on April 18, Ms. Engebretsen, 27, of Hollywood, Fla., was sitting at her desk when her Blackberry buzzed with the MySpace message. She burst into tears and called her mother with the good news.

"I used MySpace to keep in touch with friends around the country," Ms. Engebretsen said. "Never in my dreams that I think it would be that that would lead to my donor family."

On Friday, they met for the first time in Pittsburgh, where Ms. Engebretsen was participating in her eighth U.S. Transplant Games. Team Kentucky helped make it possible for Alicia and Keisha DeLapp to come as members of its donor family contingent.

After their emotional meeting, Ms. Engebretsen went out the next day and won a silver medal in swimming the individual medley. She presented it to Alicia DeLapp at the opening ceremonies that night.

She went on to win gold medals in the freestyle swimming event and in shot put. In between, she and the DeLapps grew close as family.

"Like I said, I always kept her picture with the other three," Alicia DeLapp said.

"I guess in some ways I always thought of her as a daughter."

Ms. Engebretsen added, "It's like an addition to the family but not a replacement."

"We're an extremely loving, hugging kind of family," Alicia DeLapp said. "There's always room for one more."

Last night, Ms. Engebretsen and the DeLapps went to a ceremony honoring Dr. Starzl and then to the closing ceremonies of the games.

At the end of the games, Jennifer Searl, 28, of Team Mid-New England, was named Outstanding Female Athlete, and Paul Deboer, 23, of Team Michigan, was named Outstanding Male Athlete. Team Arizona won the overall team cup.