These days you can find Eddie Garcia walking his usual four miles per day and soaking in everything and everyone around him.
That is because he still remembers a day in 2010 when everything went dark.
"I was on top of the world," Garcia said. "Everything was going great, and from one second to the next, my whole life just collapsed. It was a scary, scary night."
Garcia, a San Jose resident who was 46 at the time, suffered a massive heart attack. His case is not unusual.
The most recent recent study by the American Heart Association shows that more than 52% of Latino males in the United States suffer from heart disease -- a silent killer.
The attack in 2010 left Garcia desperately in need of a new heart.
Today he is walking with the heart of a man he never knew and from a family he never met.
"I have their son's -- because I know it's a man -- their son's heart in my chest," Garcia said. "But it's my heart too."
Since then, Garcia vowed to take care of that man's heart. And everything was going well until the day when his doctor called with troubling news.
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"My doctor calls and she says 'Eddie, you need to come to the hospital right now,'" Garcia said, adding the doctor detected heart rejection.
A new blood test by a Peninsula company named CareDX allowed doctors to see that something was not right -- something that previously required a far more invasive test.
The test meant Garcia got the early treatment he needed and now walks with no issues, exercising his heart.
Garcia these days also is an organ donor advocate, giving speeches and even writing a book about his story of survival titled "Summer in the Waiting Room."
"I want to do what I can to use my story to let people know that they have to take care of their hearts," Garcia said. "Because it's worth it."
