A South Carolina mom, has given a young man the gift of life by donating her kidney to him after seeing an organ donation plea written on his mother’s car.
Starr Gardy, is a mother-of-two from Charleston, South Carolina, who donated her kidney to Daniel Jones Jr. on May 1.
Gardy had was at Walmart to pick up party supplies for her daughter’s birthday when she saw a message posted on the window of Lashonda Pugh’s parked SUV.
Pugh has been working at Walmart for the last 14 years and was there when Gardy spotted the message in the lot.
The message said, “It said, ‘Please help. My son needs a kidney,’ and gave his blood type,'” Gardy said. “I just froze, and I felt so moved and thought, ‘What if I could help?'”
The backstory of this begins when Jones was diagnosed with a genetic condition called Alport syndrome in childhood, which caused the progressive loss of kidney function.
In March 27, 2017, he became very ill and had to be put on emergency dialysis, Jones said.
His mom Pugh said, she was heartbroken and felt helpless as his mother, she wanted to do all she could to help him through with his sickness.
Jones needed a kidney transplant, so Pugh shared a message on her car.
More than a dozen locals reached out to them, but Gardy was a perfect match among them.
“I [asked] my kids, ‘How would you feel if mommy donated a kidney to somebody?’ They were both OK with it and my husband was like, ‘Whatever you want to do is fine with me,'” Gardy recalled. “I think later on he started to feel super moved by it all too.”
Gardy and Jones went through kidney transplant at Charleston Hospital where their families met up for the first time.
Pugh said it felt like they were family, they hugged and cried and she thanked Gardy for giving her son another life.
Jones said it was a dream come true and she can’t repay Gardy for what she did for him, all he could was thank her.
As Jones and Gardy are currently recovering, he is looking forward to returning to his job in road construction and live a normal healthy life.