After decades of protecting and serving North Texas communities, former Denton County Sheriff Will Travis is now asking those same communities to help save his life.
Travis, who currently serves as a Fort Worth city marshal, is searching for a living liver donor as he battles a chronic liver disease and bile duct cancer.
His family says doctors have identified a liver transplant from a living donor as his best option for recovery.
For Travis, whose law enforcement career has included serving with the Dallas Police Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Denton County Sheriff’s Office, asking for help marks a difficult chapter in a life spent helping others.
His daughter, Dani, said watching her father confront a life-threatening illness has been especially difficult.
“You grow up looking at your dad like he’s your hero. He’s our Superman, and you don’t think it’s going to happen to him,” she said.
Travis has spent the past six years battling primary sclerosing cholangitis, a chronic disease that causes inflammation and scarring of the bile ducts.
His health challenges intensified in March when he was diagnosed with bile duct cancer, requiring regular chemotherapy treatments.
“We just felt like our world fell in, in March,” a family member said.
Travis said his liver is deteriorating rapidly, making the search for a donor increasingly urgent.
“It’s very critical because the liver’s deteriorating at a pretty fast pace, and I don’t know what that timeline is, but I do know it won’t last too terribly much longer,” Travis said.
His family is now working to find a healthy person who could potentially donate part of their liver.
For the past month, flyers seeking potential living liver donors have circulated as the Travis family reaches out to friends, former colleagues and strangers.
The response has extended well beyond North Texas.
“We’re getting phone calls from all over the United States,” a family member said.
Many people have signed up through Living Donor Dallas to learn whether they might be a potential match.
The family says the response to their outreach has been overwhelming.
“We posted, and after a day or two I had hundreds of thousands of views on my post. I had hundreds of people sharing it, and it’s people we don’t know too, which has been so heartfelt to see people we know and people we don’t know coming together to help you,” a family member said.
Travis expressed gratitude for the support.
“It is, and I’m so blessed by that,” he said.
The outpouring of encouragement has provided hope as the family continues searching for a donor.
“It’s humbling, very humbling for me,” Travis said.
For Dani, the community’s response reflects the impact her father has made throughout his career.
“It just furthers why he’s Superman,” she said.
The Travis family continues to encourage potential donors to connect with Living Donor Dallas to learn more about the screening process and whether they could be a match.
This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC DFW. AI tools helped convert the story into a digital article, and an NBC DFW journalist edited it again before publication.
