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I'm Brian Martindale, and I'm the executive director of Kidneys for Kids.

And I'm also a living kidney donor to a ten year old girl in 2013.

The mission of Kidneys for Kids is to recruit adult living kidney donors for children nationwide, and provide financial grants for families, to cover costs not covered by insurance for their child's treatment or their child's kidney transplant.

And then in Michigan, only as a pilot program.

We also recruit living kidney donors for adults as well as we provide the same grant services available for all the adults in Michigan who are battling kidney disease.

In 2012, just after turning 50, I read a newspaper story in the Bay City Times, which is I'm live now.

And then I saw the same story that night on our CBS station, TV5 in Saginaw, Michigan, and this story was about a ten year old girl, who had kidney disease and needed a kidney transplant.

Her mother, in desperation of thinking, how can I find a kidney donor for my daughter?

One day she just decided to grab a pink piece of construction paper, and she just scribbled on it.

My daughter's in kidney failure.

I can't lose her.

And please help me.

And she went and she stood in front of our Walmart, And she stood there for the better part of a day, and she had many people stop and offer money, but nobody offered to become or, you know, they talk to her about her daughter having kidney disease and needed for a donor, but nobody offered to test, Two years prior, I had actually tried to help an adult friend of mine who I was unable to donate for, so I was already familiar with, donating a kidney to somebody.

So I made a call anonymously and I found out was her blood type, which is important to start with.

The main thing to donate directly to a person.

And I decided from there, within a week after that, I contacted the University of Michigan, where she was listed, and I asked to be tested for Jessica Shereen, telling them I read her story and I wanted to help her.

And, I went through testing, which had already done two years prior for this gentleman that I mentioned, and we turned out to match, as if we were siblings, which is a miracle if you're not related.

It's like a 1 in 1,000,000 matched match on the six different factors that are used to match a kidney donor and recipient.

So, we matched that close.

We never met...we live four blocks apart.

So there's a little miracle in itself.

And, we were introduced a couple months later, just weeks prior to our surgery.

And, then we rode together in a donated limousine in January 11th of 2013, she received my kidney at the University of Michigan.

And 48 hours later, I was wheeled over to see her.

And this little girl who I'd written down to this, surgery with and her mother only meeting for the second time.

And she was so frail and white looking when we drove down.

And she looked, you know, full of color, full of life.

She looked like a totally different girl.

They wheeled me into the room, and, Is that.

Jessica stood up and got to see her, and I was just blown away, at that point, seeing the difference, you know, in 48 hours And, over the coming years, we would have a pizza party every year to start with.

You know, she's ten, 11, and my wife and I, we started to go to her high school functions, plays and things like that.

And today she's 22.

She's in college at Eastern Michigan University.

studying to be a neuroscientist.

She promised me when we.

Second.

Anyway, she promised me when she was ten that she was going to help people.

And lo and behold, she's getting a degree as a neuroscientist.

And, she's perfectly healthy every time I see her, it's kind of like I receive a present.

Yeah, that's why I get a little emotional, you know, getting to watch her grow up and and become this successful person.

And now she wants to help other people going forward.

She wants to work in research.

But here we are.

We're going to be year 12 on January 11th, and she's in perfect health now.

And, like I say, she's helping other people.

So in 2022, Kidneys for Kids became formally a nonprofit to recruit living kidney donors.

We knew we had to do something to get these children's stories seen because only one out of 50,000 people will ever donate an organ as a living person.

So to do that, I knew I had to get people on TV.

A couple times prior, I'd gotten adults on TV, with the help of our, our CBS station.

They had done Jessica and our story, and I found that both times, I'd done that, that it worked.

And they happened to find living donors after people saw their stories.

So knowing that inspired people, I decided to take a national driving trip.

My idea was to drive town to town and schedule TV interviews for these children that we had been in contact with since we founded driving for Life and Kidneys for kids in 2022, and we had this growing list of kids that we were helping to recruit kidney donors for.

So I started by driving to their cities in 2022 and meeting families personally.

And some of the interviews done at home, some done at hospitals and then in 2020, four, I should say the second formal year for driving for life between the two trips, we've covered now, 30 different cities, almost 20,000 miles in total in two years.

And we found 11 different, different kidney donors for 11 different children nationwide.

So my goal out of this is to find 100 kidney donors for 100 kids.

So about the next 4 to 5 summers, we're going to be on the road with this driving for life mission.

And then, around year round, we do resume interviews to also get these stories told nationwide.

you were considering to becoming a living kidney donor to your child, in a doubt.

All you have to do is be in generally good health, preferably under age 55, and you contact the transplant center where the person is is, going through their surgery or their person is listed through.

And then you schedule a blood test followed by physical test.

And once you're declared healthy, then you're able to donate to that person.

And the incentive is for you.

Number one, you're saving that child or adult's life by giving up your kidney.

Number two, your life is not going to change.

You're still going to function at the same level as you did with two kidneys.

With one kidney.

I can tell you that from 12 years of experience.

And the other thing you're going to get from this is the satisfaction of knowing that you saved somebody's life.

Seeing that person, that child or adult going forward, living healthy.

If you're watching this story as an adult, I want you to know that you can help a child as young as two.

I say this because most adults cant fathom that this full size kidney in their body, and then they see a story.

Sometimes we're with babies as young as two years old.

How can my full size kidney help this little child?

They assume that another child has to pass away for that child to be helped.

And that's totally not true.

Your full sized kidney is placed in the abdominal area of the child that you're helping, and they literally grow into it.

So yes, you seeing a story of a little child and no matter where you are in the United States, that's the miracle of the National Kidney Registry.

You can be in Michigan and you could see the story of a child, let's say, in New York.

And you wanted to help that child from here.

You can donate in what's called a pair donation.

Pair donation involves you donated to somebody you matched perfectly.

And you in that case, essentially produce a voucher is given to you, and you give that voucher to the child or adult that you then want to help.

So you donate to a person.

That person gets a perfect match.

In turn.

Somebody else who matches the person you want to help donates back to that child or adult.

They get a perfect match, and in this case, two lives are saved or more from a pair donation over a direct donation.

Becoming a living kidney donor in 2013 was one of the most rewarding things I've done with my life.

there's no feeling in the world like giving life to a child or adult And seeing them go forward in life.

And I'm letting you know today you can live a healthy, rewarding life like I do with one kidney and do all the same things you did with two, and knowing that you saved a life with that other kidney.

I don't think there's any better reward you could receive in life than giving life to somebody else.