ROANOKE, Va. (October 12, 2009)--) - Michelle Lineberry Mullins, a heart transplant reipient whose effort to find the donor's family attracted national attention, has died at 44.

Mullins' father, William Lineberry, said his daughter died Saturday at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesviile after liver and kidney problems.

Mullins was a college student in 1986 when she was diagnosed with a virus that weakens the heart muscle.

She received a transplant after two weeks on a waiting list.

The heart was that of 14-year-old Radina Mundo, who died in 1986 of a brain aneurysm.

After years of searching, Mullins found the donor's family in 2006 and traveled to Texas to meet them.

Mundo's mother, Debra King of Mesquite, Texas, and her son, Don King, said they had come to consider Mullins as family.