ENTIAT, Wash. - Most of us do it more than 20,000 times a day and we take it for granted, never even thinking about how it happens. But Brooke Travis does. For her, simply taking a breath - every single breath - is a very special event.

The moment was electric when Brooke Travis got her high-school diploma and a standing ovation.

"It feels really good," said Brooke. "It's like a huge accomplishment."

We first met the Entiat teenager four months ago as she waited in Seattle for her second double-lung transplant.

Cystic fibrosis forced the first, which was initially a success, then her new lungs began failing.

Back home, the community rallied to support her and her family. Donation jars sat on scores of store counters in Entiat and Wenatchee. A local motorcycle club included her in their recent fundraising "Run for the Border."

Many classmates at Entiat high volunteered as organ donors.

"I've been with all my friends since kindergarten and they've been so supportive," said Brooke. "I'm really thankful that I have all of them."

But the medical picture was grim. Just days after her interview in February, Brooke was back in intensive care at the University of Washington, hanging on.

"She couldn't breathe anymore. She couldn't do it on her own anymore," said Terri Travis, Brooke's mother.

"Brooke's ventilation had been so bad that her carbon dioxide level just kept climbing and climbing, and at one point she became quite lethargic," said Dr. Michael Mulligan, UW Cardiothoracic Surgery.

"He brought me out into the room and told me, 'She probably has the weekend,'" said Terri.

Instead, she made it for another five weeks – amazing, say her mother, her sister her friends, her nurses and doctors.

"She was on a ton of prayer chains," said Terri Travis. "It was almost like this miracle was keeping her alive."

"This young lady with a tracheotomy tube in her neck had respiratory therapists and nurses connect her ventilator on wheels, so she could push it around the ICU and was walking to keep herself optimally conditioned," said Dr. Mulligan. "I've never seen that before."

"She wasn't ready to go and I wasn't ready to go to her funeral," said Terri. "I was not going to let that happen and she had so much support."

Finally another family's tragedy and generosity brought hope.

"We got just the right donor opportunity at just the right time," said Dr. Mulligan.

"They just told us it was a male and he was from Portland, Oregon and he was real athletic," said Brooke.

"It was tough. It was hard to beg someone to give their life to save my daughter's life," said Terri Travis.

"The heart and some very vital structures were definitely at risk, but somebody was looking out for us that day and things went well," said Dr. Sullivan.

She was going to wait for those lungs. Her attitude had a lot to do with it. She wasn't going to go. She was waiting - waiting for another chance to enjoy nature, to take a simple walk in the park, waiting and surviving to graduate with all her friends.

"I didn't think I was going to make it this far," said Brooke. "Up there on stage, getting my diploma handed to me, that means a lot."

But what means the most now is what she feels 15 times a minute or so.

"Every breath that I take, I'm thankful for," said Travis. "I don't take it for granted at all."

Her post graduation plans? Keep educating others about organ donation and go to college to study - not medicine, she says she's had enough of that, but accounting.

Brooke Travis will have to take drugs every day to keep her body from rejecting her new lungs, but her doctor says she should be able to live a very active life.