In 2001, Pat Hardison loved being a volunteer firefighter. He was a successful salesman in Senatobia, Mississippi, so he didn't have to do it, but saving lives was his passion. Then one day, everything changed.
Pat and three other firefighters responded to a house fire. The only thing he remembers is the ceiling collapsing onto him and his oxygen mask melting to his face. The severe burns would leave him unrecognizable to his three children.
“I mean, I left home one day a normal dad, leaving to go to work… and just like that everything changed drastically," Pat told ABC. “My kids were scared to death of me. You can't blame them. They’re young kids."
Pat would undergo 70 surgeries, and his wife Chrissi and their children would learn to accept and love the new Pat. Then there was another tragedy: 14 years later, miles away from Mississippi, in New York, 26-year-old David Rodebaugh would die in a bicycle accident. David's and Pat's fates would collide. Plastic surgeon Eduardo Rodriguez believed David would be the perfect donor to Pat for an unprecedented facial transplant. There was a 50/50 chance the surgery would take Pat's life, but the experiment would be done in hopes of helping military veterans and wounded warriors. Pat knew that even if he died, he might be saving another man in uniform one day. So he went through with it.
“I prayed daily that there would be a miracle to help me get through this, and you know, it’s all in God’s timing,” Pat said. Watch as he and his family see his miraculous new face for the first time.
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