Italian journalists were the first ones to call it the "Nicholas Effect."

Just a week after 7-year-old Nicholas Green was killed in a robbery attempt in Italy and donated his organs to seven people in 1994, the number of people signing organ donor cards in that country quadrupled.

It's been 15 years since that night, and Nicholas' father, Reg Green, still sees the ripple effect of the family's decision.

Much of that continuing impact comes from the 1998 TV movie based on his son's story, "Nicholas' Gift," starring Alan Bates and Jamie Lee Curtis in the roles of Mr. Green and his wife, Maggie.

"The movie continues to pop up on cable all over the world," he said, "and we always know when it's been shown somewhere, because people will e-mail us and say 'It changed my mind about organ donation' or 'I'd never thought about this issue before.' "

Mr. Green, now president of the Nicholas Green Foundation, was in Pittsburgh earlier this month to speak at a symposium of the regional chapter of the International Transplant Nurses Society.

A former British financial journalist, he settled in California to write a mutual funds newsletter.

Nicholas was the first child of his second marriage. By the time Reg and Maggie Green decided to take a four-week vacation in Switzerland and Italy, they also had a daughter, 4-year-old Eleanor.

On the night of the shooting, the Greens were driving south from Naples to Sicily when a car pulled up close behind them, and then moved alongside.

Two men in the car began shouting at the Greens.

"We couldn't understand what they were saying, but it was clear they wanted us to pull over. But it seemed to me that if we did stop they'd be able to do anything they wanted to with us, and so I accelerated and they did the same and then there was a huge explosion and the window behind the driver's window was blown in."

The children were asleep on the back seat. When Mrs. Green turned around, they both still seemed to be sleeping. Mr. Green pulled away, and the assailants then shot out the driver's window.

Racing ahead, the Greens soon lost their pursuers, and then saw an accident scene ahead where an ambulance was stopped.

Mr. Green pulled over there and turned on the interior light. That's when he noticed that Nicholas' tongue was protruding from his mouth and that he had vomited. "That was the first time we knew anything had happened," he said.

The ambulance rushed Nicholas to a hospital in Sicily. There, doctors found he had been shot in the base of the brain. Two days later, he was declared brain dead.

"It was Maggie who first said, 'Now that he's gone, shouldn't we donate the organs?' and it was just so obvious," Mr. Green said.

Nicholas' corneas helped to restore sight to two people, his heart went to a boy who had undergone five unsuccessful heart surgeries, his pancreas cells went to a woman with severe diabetes, his kidneys went to two children on dialysis, and his liver was given to a woman "who was actually dying of liver failure the night all this happened."

The shooting, it turned out, occurred after would-be thieves targeted the Greens by mistake. The two men in the other car had received a tip that a car with Rome license plates would be delivering jewelry to Sicily that night, "and they saw our Rome license plates and assumed it was us," Mr. Green said. The two men eventually were found, tried and convicted after an appeal. One is serving 20 years in jail. The shooter is serving a life sentence.

Eventually, the Greens met all seven recipients of Nicholas' organs. The media spotlight that followed them led to a substantial increase in organ donation rates in Italy, he said. At the time of his son's death, the Italian organ donation rate was about six people per million residents -- roughly a third of the U.S. rate then. Today, it is 21 people per million, nearly equal to the U.S. rate.

Mr. Green went on to write a book, "The Nicholas Effect," which came out a year after the movie. In 2007, he followed up with "The Gift that Heals," a book that contains dozens of stories about people who have received and donated organs, as well as others involved in transplant activities.

His main goal in writing the second book, he said, was "to familiarize people with what it was like to be in this situation" of being asked to donate organs, "so if it ever happened to their families, they would think, this was a good thing; I must try to make sure something good comes out of my situation."

As a former journalist, Mr. Green knows how much publicity helps the cause. The night after the shooting, when police were still looking for the assailants, Mr. Green was surrounded by a crowd of reporters in Sicily who, among other things, wanted a picture of his son.

"We had one picture of him in our camera, and so I just gave them the camera. I knew that was the right thing to do, because that was when the interest was at its highest, and his picture appeared in the papers the next day, and so, from the very beginning, people who read the story could associate it with this innocent-looking boy."

To this day, he still sees Nicholas with his mind's camera.

"I think of Nicholas several times a day, and a vision often comes to mind where I think of all the people who are alive and are doing well because of organ transplants, and all the people who have written to us and said, 'I think I'm alive because of your son's story.' "