Donor Search Success Stories

On the outside, Tim Hilterman and Brielle Trice couldn’t be more different. Hilterman is a 43-year-old investment advisor from Lexington. Brielle is a 12-year-old girl about to enter seventh grade at Highland Middle School. But on the inside, Hilterman and Brielle share one important thing: A kidney.

After receiving an end-stage renal disease diagnosis in 2018 and not finding a successful match among her inner circle, veteran NYPD Officer Melissa Quinones found an anonymous donor through the nonprofit Kidneys for First Responders.

Transplant recipients need expensive immunosuppressive drugs. Medicare will cover them, but until recently, the coverage stopped at three years. Some patients can lose their transplanted kidneys because of it. As of this year, Medicare is no longer limiting coverage of these drugs to three years.

In December 2021, Rachel Harrelson, learned she was in advanced kidney failure due to IgA nephropathy and would need a transplant. She had a vacation planned in June, so she figured she would have the transplant in July, Then she found out the wait time was 4-5 years.

June 1 is a day Eric Warnke has waited for a long time. The 23-year-old is having a kidney transplant at UW Health in Madison. It’s a surgery he’s needed since November 2021.

Every Thursday, Sam Moses heads to the park for ultimate frisbee practice. That ended in 2021 when he had to go on dialysis, but one of his teammates, Emily Brixey, volunteered to be his kidney donor. The surgery was November 17, and just three months later, both Moses and Brixey were back playing ultimate frisbee.

Yang Zhang, Associate Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Virginia Tech, suffered from chronic kidney disease since he was a teenager and needed a kidney transplant. He posted on Facebook in search of a donor and received 33 responses, including one from Annie Chalmers-Williams.

Marc Weiner has two rules: take things one day at a time and don’t play the “what if” game. Since he was in his 20s, he has tried not to fall into the trap of wondering “what if this goes wrong.”

Todd Dostie was 21 when he first learned his kidney was failing and he would need a transplant. Eight years after his first transplant, he needed another one, but this time he faced a 100% rejection rate. Just before Christmas 2022, about 30 years after his first transplant, his doctors found a match.

Cindy McLean entered renal failure and started looking for a kidney donor 10 years ago. Heather Larkam heard about Cindy’s search, but couldn’t donate at the time. Ten years later, Heather found out Cindy still hadn’t gotten a transplant and reached out to help. The two are a perfect match.