She referred Andrea Razetto, whose liver was ravaged by hepatitis C, to Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, where she quickly received a transplant.
For six years, she had withered on the list at UCI. "Every time I asked, they said, 'No, we don't have a liver,' " said Razetto, now 63. She has since sued UCI for damages, and the case is pending.
Few patients were moved, and new ones were still being added.
Since Cao left in July 2004, to go into private practice in Fountain Valley doing liver and pancreas surgeries -- but not transplants -- UCI has relied on Drs. Marquis Hart and Ajai Khanna. Both work full time at UC San Diego, 90 miles away.
The hospital has continued to refuse livers more than any other transplant center in the region. Just four of the 129 offers made to UCI by OneLegacy were accepted this year.
When the program was closed Thursday, 106 patients remained on the waiting list.
The decision also put a surgeon at the University of Pittsburgh in a bind. Dr. Michael E. De Vera had just accepted an offer to head the liver transplant program full-time.
"That's now not happening," Drake said Friday.
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Even before the shutdown, some people who knew the program's history tried to limit the damage.
Carol Craig did not work in the transplant center but taught UCI patients about hepatitis C until 2004, working directly with Hoefs.
She remembers the transplant program as a cold place, where patients were sometimes left in tears.
Now she works elsewhere as an advocate for hepatitis patients, who turn to her for recommendations on transplant centers.
Two weeks ago, Craig organized a bus trip for 31 patients from Orange County to see the transplant program at USC.
"It was wonderful -- gosh," she said.
Before taking gravely ill patients all the way to Los Angeles, Craig thought hard. She asked herself: "Would I go to UCI if I had choices?"
"The answer," she said, "was no."
