CHESAPEAKE, Va. (WAVY) — February is Heart Month, and for one woman in Hampton Roads, that has literal meaning.

Tina Buck, 46, has the distinction of being one of the longest surviving heart transplant recipients in the world.

And while it might be a sentimental gesture to give someone your heart this Valentine’s Day, for Buck, it was literally true 31 years ago.

“It was T-ball, then softball, then cheerleading, then marching band,” Buck said.

She was an active teenager at Indian River High School in 1994, a member of the Marching Braves.

“And then all of a sudden,” she said, “it was like, ‘Why can’t I do this?”

Out of nowhere, she was unable to do the things she loved. She went to doctors but was misdiagnosed.

“I was in the marching band and couldn’t keep up with everybody else,” she said. “I didn’t really know what was going on. My doctor first told me I was a lazy teenager. Then he told me I had exercise-induced asthma. Then he told me I had asthma.”

Finally, a doctor noticed a bulging vein in her neck. A chest x-ray proved it was hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Her heart had become too big to contract.

“You don’t expect heart failure when you’re a 15-year-old girl,” Buck said. “You just don’t expect that.”

Months were then spent at CHKD just waiting for a heart.

Across the U.S., between 4,000 and 5,000 people wait each year for that opportunity. Wait times can vary depending on blood type, sex, weight and where you live. So much also goes into making sure the donor and recipient are a good match.

“Most people understand blood-type matching,” said Dr. Christopher Sciortino, program director of the heart transplant service at Sentara. “There are other immunologic factors that donors and recipients have that need to match well, so that there’s a very high likelihood that when a donor heart is placed inside of recipient, that that match will be successful.”

It’s an amazing procedure with a tight turnaround time. A heart can only survive outside a body for four hours. Tina’s donor turned out to be 11-year-old Natalie from Asheville, North Carolina. Natalie was walking to the mailbox and was struck by two teenage drag racers. Natalie was deaf and didn’t hear the cars coming. Now, her heart was about to beat again inside Buck. But it wasn’t always a done deal.

“Her father said no, her mother said yes,” Buck said. “So I almost am not here today. Her mom finally said the key thing that made them switch over to yes was that Natalie always liked to help people. So that’s what made her mom change her dad’s mind.”

Now, Buck has survived 31 years with that heart. The average survival rate is 15, but now medicine and treatments are making it possible to live longer, fuller lives.

“I was able to do my first heart walk,” she said, “and I did three miles and I’ve got my first medal for it. I’m so proud of that medal, because three miles to me is amazing.”

And she stays close with Natalie’s family, her aunt especially.

“She calls me her heart niece and I call her my heart aunt,” Buck said.

They even made her a scrapbook, full of articles from the Virginian-Pilot and their Asheville newspaper, detailing her and Natalie’s journeys — gratitude filling the pages.

“Being an organ donor is one of the most generous things that any person can choose to do,” Sciortino said.

Buck said she doesn’t want to be defined by what happened, or think too much about it, but strives to look forward and focus on other things. But there is a constant reminder — on rainy days.

“The very day before my heart transplant, there was a big rainbow in the sky,” Buck said. “And my transplant coordinator made a wish on that rainbow. And so now, anytime I see a rainbow, I think it means there’s someone getting a heart, or there’s someone from heaven speaking down to me saying, ‘Hey, everything’s going to be OK.”

Buck wants to stress the importance of becoming an organ donor. By doing so, you have the ability to save not one, but potentially seven or eight lives. To find out more about being an organ donor, visit https://www.organdonor.gov/learn/process/living-donation. To learn more about Sentara Health’s organ transplant program, go to https://www.sentara.com/medicalservices/transplant.