U.S. kidney donor wins the lottery
By AP
Hampton, Virginia -- A woman who forever changed the fortunes of a man she didn't know by anonymously donating a kidney has come into a small fortune of her own, winning $500,000 US in the Virginia Lottery. "I think if you do good things for people, good things will happen to you," Mitzi Nichols of Virginia Beach said during a news conference yesterday at the lottery's regional office.
Nichols, a 44-year-old cashier in a gift shop, bought her winning scratch-off ticket Monday.
She plans to keep her job and use her winnings - $355,000 after taxes - to buy her first house, a truck for her husband in the navy and a car for herself, and to help her daughter return to college.
She's also going to pay to fix the broken-down car of the man who no longer needs to be hooked up to a dialysis machine because of her organ donation.
Calvin Saunders of Portsmouth said in a telephone interview that he was overwhelmed by Nichols's continuing generosity.
"I told her, 'You've given me enough by giving me a kidney,' " said Saunders, 54, a medical transport driver who had suffered from kidney failure.
Nichols said she was working as a dialysis technician at a hospital in the 1980s when she decided she would someday help a kidney patient. In 2001, she anonymously donated a kidney.
While organs are transplanted from people who die and from living donors such as spouses, parents and siblings, stranger-to-stranger donations from living donors are rare.
Following transplant protocol, Saunders and Nichols didn't get to meet until a year after he received her kidney.
The two keep in frequent touch.
"She's part of me and I'm a part of her now," Saunders said.
By AP
Hampton, Virginia -- A woman who forever changed the fortunes of a man she didn't know by anonymously donating a kidney has come into a small fortune of her own, winning $500,000 US in the Virginia Lottery. "I think if you do good things for people, good things will happen to you," Mitzi Nichols of Virginia Beach said during a news conference yesterday at the lottery's regional office.
Nichols, a 44-year-old cashier in a gift shop, bought her winning scratch-off ticket Monday.
She plans to keep her job and use her winnings - $355,000 after taxes - to buy her first house, a truck for her husband in the navy and a car for herself, and to help her daughter return to college.
She's also going to pay to fix the broken-down car of the man who no longer needs to be hooked up to a dialysis machine because of her organ donation.
Calvin Saunders of Portsmouth said in a telephone interview that he was overwhelmed by Nichols's continuing generosity.
"I told her, 'You've given me enough by giving me a kidney,' " said Saunders, 54, a medical transport driver who had suffered from kidney failure.
Nichols said she was working as a dialysis technician at a hospital in the 1980s when she decided she would someday help a kidney patient. In 2001, she anonymously donated a kidney.
While organs are transplanted from people who die and from living donors such as spouses, parents and siblings, stranger-to-stranger donations from living donors are rare.
Following transplant protocol, Saunders and Nichols didn't get to meet until a year after he received her kidney.
The two keep in frequent touch.
"She's part of me and I'm a part of her now," Saunders said.