On Aug. 29, 1985, Dr. Jack Copeland, a cardiac surgeon at University Medical Center (now Banner—University Medical Center Tucson), and biomedical engineer Richard Smith, implanted a Total Artificial Heart (Jarvik 7 100cc heart, now known as the SynCardia TAH-t) into a 25-year-old grocery store clerk.

It was the first time a surgeon implanted the Total Artificial Heart to allow a patient time to get a matching donor heart for transplant when one became available.