Wednesday, 20 January 2021
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Vol. CXXXIII, No. 37
THIS WEEK IN SPORTS Spring football season shutdown hurts two local college athletes. See Page 9
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LYNDHURST LIFE SAVER 24-year-old’s Good Samaritan kidney donation saves 4 lives in California & Florida
officer’s hospital, but it turned out that he already had a donor,” Graw says. Despite this, after doing hours of research, Gianna says she still felt ready to donate. So, she reached out to Hackensack University Medical Center and started the kidney-donation process. “I met with a social worker, a psychologist, a pharmacist and a nephrologist — and they did lots and lots of tests to make sure I was healthy enough to donate,” she says.
By Kevin Canessa kc@theobserver.com
I
magine being able to claim that something you did saved a human life. Now, imagine that times four. Such is the case for a Lyndhurst woman whose selfless generosity led to a “Good Samaritan” kidney donation through Hackensack University Medical Center’s partnership with National Kidney Registry (NKR), an organization that facilitates living donor kidney transplants. Lyndhurst’s Gianna Graw, 24, saved four lives to become the first patient to make such a donation anywhere in the country. Her generous donation kicked off a zig-zagging, bi-coastal chain of four kidney transplants in Los Angeles, Tampa, Los Angeles again and finally, San Francisco. Graw says she sees her kidney donation as part of another type of chain: A legacy of kindness and compassion started by her father, William Graw, a Jersey City police officer, died Oct. 2, 2016. “My dad dedicated his life to helping others, and I wanted to find a way to honor him and live his legacy,” Graw
HUMC photo
Gianna Graw, seen here in a photo taken while she was in a hospital, donated a kidney in what is known as a Good Samaritan transplant. No one she knew needed the organ, but she still had a desire to donate one in honor of her late father.
says. Graw says she first heard about kidney donations shortly after her dad died, during a brief mention in one of her undergraduate classes
at Stockton University, where she majored in psychology. She began researching to learn more about the kidney-donation process. Last January, when she
learned of a Jersey City police officer who needed a donor kidney, she says she felt called upon to do something to honor her father’s memory. “I got in touch with the
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PARTNERING WITH THE NKR During this time, Graw says she learned Hackensack University Medical Center established a partnership with the National Kidney Registry. NKR has the largest pool of living-kidney donors across 100 transplant centers in the United States, allowing for better transplant matches and outcomes. The NKR uses a sophisticated matching system to pair donors and recipients. After the hospital performs the donor-harvesting procedure, NKR picks up the donor organ and transports it to the recipient’s transplant facility. “It can take years to get a deceased donor kidney, and See KIDNEY, Page 16