For days during fall of 1991, Budge Porter maneuvered his wheelchair through the doorways of UCI's famed fertility clinic and into the offices of Dr. Ricardo Asch.

Porter, once a college football star who ran 40 yards in 4.6 seconds, took that long to raise himself from the wheelchair. Longer still to haul himself onto the examining table and listen as a doctor said it would take two surgeries -- one for him and one for his wife, Diane -- to make them parents. The cost: more than $35,000.

"We were desperate," Diane Porter, a former San Juan Capistrano resident, said this week from her home outside Omaha, Neb. "They could have said it was $100,000 and we would have done it."

Last week, the Porters learned that Asch did more than extract Diane Porter's eggs, fertilize them in the lab with her husband's sperm and insert the embryos into her fallopian tubes.

He also, according to laboratory and medical records obtained by The Orange County Register, took four of her eggs, inseminated them with another man's sperm and reserved them for a Newport Beach woman who also was trying to get pregnant.

The Porters, whose treatment by Asch did not result in a pregnancy, said they never consented to donating their eggs.

"We wanted, absolutely, without question, every single egg that was harvested for the chance to be fertilized," said Budge Porter, 39, who was severely paralyzed after a football injury 19 years ago. "To take every fiber of Diane's being -- a cell that could create life for us -- with all the money we spent, all the problems Diane and I had faced because of my disability ... to take advantage of people who have been through hell and back is despicable."

The Porters are the third couple to speak publicly about what the University of California, Irvine, says were unauthorized egg transfers that may have involved at least 35 patients at its Center for Reproductive Health.

Asch, who directed the fertility clinic until it was closed June 2, has repeatedly denied knowingly misusing any patient's eggs. His attorney, who was faxed copies of the Porters' clinic records, declined comment Thursday.

The records the Register has, which were authenticated by the biologist who kept them at the clinic, indicate that the Porter eggs taken for the Newport Beach woman apparently did not fertilize and become embryos.

Instead, according to clinic records, the Newport Beach woman was implanted with six other embryos: three from the eggs of Debbie Challender of Corona, and three from an unknown source. Nine months later she bore twins -- a boy and a girl -- whose parentage cannot be determined without DNA tests.

The Newport Beach couple's attorney, Steve Militzok, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

The Porters have retained Newport Beach attorney Theodore S. Wentworth, who filed suit against Asch, the doctor's two partners and UCI on behalf of the Challenders.

Almost two years ago, Diane Porter gave birth to Claire, a tow-headed girl who fills the house with babbles and smiles, and crawls up on her father's lap every night to get a piece of candy from his shirt pocket. Claire's birth was the result of in-vitro procedures performed in Omaha.

Having Claire has cushioned the shock of the egg-theft allegations. But the child also makes the Porters painfully aware of what they lost.

"Some people can't understand why we'd be so upset," said Diane Porter. "They say, `It's just a piece of tissue. What's the big deal?' "

The big deal is DNA: little bits of genetic material that tie the Porters to a legacy larger than themselves. That legacy is visible everywhere in the comfortable home they have created in a small town near Omaha.

Family photos can be seen from every chair in the living room. There are the orchards started by Budge Porter's grandfather, after whom Grosvenor "Budge" Porter is named. There are pictures of his grandfather, the only Nebraskan to be in both the state Racing Hall of Fame and the state Football Hall of Fame. There are photos of Diane Porter's family in San Juan Capistrano.

But mostly, there is football.

Three generations of Porters have played for the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers: Grove Porter, the grandfather; J. Morton Porter, the father; and the two brothers, Budge and Scott.

It was during a scrimmage in April 1976 that Budge Porter suffered a bruise on his spinal chord that left him paralyzed below the neck. He is now well-known in Nebraska as the man who fought to claim his life back, struggling through years of physical therapy to regain enough movement to walk short distances on crutches and commute daily in a van with hand controls to his job as an investment consultant.

When the Porters married six years ago, there was no question that they wanted to create a large, close Catholic family like those they grew up in.

"We might someday have all the material things we wanted, but if it was just the two of us staring at each other, what good would they do us?" Diane Porter asked. "We have such fine examples around us of what marriage and family is about."

Low-grade infections caused by Budge Porter's paralysis made it impossible for him to become a father without surgery to extract his sperm. He had two unsuccessful operations before the couple heard about Asch's clinic at UCI.

"I thought he was God," Diane Porter said.

The Porters took a second mortgage on their house and borrowed more than $10,000 from friends and family. Budge's siblings gave up money they were to inherit from their grandparents. Diane's sister, Anna, allowed the couple to charge a laparoscopic surgery on her credit card.

Budge's father flew out from Nebraska to help his son prepare for the surgery and to help care for him afterward. They stayed with Diane's parents, while Diane's mother gave her daughter the painful daily fertility-drug shots that induce the ovaries to release many eggs in a single cycle.

Ultrasound showed that Diane had as many as 60 eggs that could be harvested. Asch, she said, told her to take a special hormone shot at midnight to allow the eggs to be retrieved the next day.

But after the procedure, according to the Porters, Asch told the couple that he extracted only 22 eggs.

However, photocopied records obtained by the Register show that 26 eggs were harvested from Diane Porter, and that four of them went to the woman in Newport Beach.

The couple still has six embryos from the 1991 surgeries in storage. They wanted to save some in case the fertility technology improves.

News about the UCI egg theft allegations have kept the Porters up nights. They and their families say they feel hurt and betrayed by the doctors and UCI.

The couple, Budge Porter said, hope that by speaking out, they can warn other infertile couples to be more vigilant.

"We could have stayed perfectly happy without hearing one word of this," he said. "We are also the type of people who wouldn't want to go on without learning of this. ... Now that we know, we are the type of people who cannot let this go without a battle."