It started with a bumper sticker looking for a kidney donor and ended up with an award for volunteerism.
Dunwoody resident Libby Pollock was driving with her teenage daughter to Sunday School at Temple Emanu-el when she noticed a bumper sticker on a car that read “Kidney 4 Izzy.”
Intrigued, Pollock asked her daughter to look up the website listed on the bumper sticker and found that it was Izzy’s family trying to find a kidney donor for her.
“It took me about a minute to think about it, and then it was, ‘I guess I’m going to give someone my kidney,’” Pollock said.
At first, Pollock tried to match with the Izzy from the bumper sticker – Isabella Dufauchard – but after several rounds of testing, she was close, but not a perfect match for the 19-year-old Kennesaw State student. However, Pollock had made the decision to be an altruistic donor, so she plowed ahead with the process.
Meanwhile, Dufauchard found a match, thanks to a response to billboards she placed around the city, and received her kidney last April. On Jan. 3, Pollock underwent surgery at Piedmont Hospital, and her kidney quickly left on a plane to be given to a Colorado woman.
“In the grand scheme of things, this was just a little blip in my life,” Pollock said. “I had the full support of my family, and my husband, Jeff, and the many people who brought me meals for weeks.”
She has been in contact with her recipient, who said that her son was hoping to donate his kidney to her, but like Pollock, wasn’t a perfect match. He made an altruistic donation anyway, like Pollock, and was matched with a person who had been given “a one-in-a-million” chance to get a compatible kidney.
Pollock’s donation did not go unnoticed. On Jan. 23, during Shabbat services, Temple Emanu-el Senior Rabbi Spike Anderson presented her with the Shirley Schiffer Volunteerism Award. Izzy and her family were on hand to celebrate Pollock’s award.
Anderson compared Pollock’s courage to the story of Israelites’ courage while crossing the Red Sea.
“We force the miracle only when we take the lead for the people who want to try,” Anderson said during the ceremony. “Hundreds, maybe thousands of people, saw that bumper sticker, but few contacted the family, and you were one of them.”
“The Talmud says if you save a life, it’s as if you saved a universe,” Anderson continued. “You decided to make a kidney donation in order to save someone’s life, and you did. Your courage has allowed a person’s universe to exist.”
According to a 2020 article in the Penn Medicine News, more than 90,000 patients are waiting for kidney transplants, yet only 20,000 are performed each year. More than 5,000 people on the waiting list die yearly without receiving a new kidney, the article said.
“My ultimate goal is to inspire others to do the same,” Pollock said. “After the ceremony, a gentleman came up to me and told me has committed in 2025 to give his kidney to someone.”
For more information about making an altruistic kidney donation, visit the National Kidney Foundation at www.kidney.org.