When Tony Gonzalez of Illinois required an organ donor to be freed from the dialysis machine keeping him alive despite his failing kidney, an Arizona woman named Joely Sanders stepped up. Sanders’s brother, Frank Pompa, also required a new kidney after one of his had failed – and, of all people, it was Gonzalez’s wife, Tracey, who provided the crucial organ donation to free him from his dialysis machine in October. The cross-country tale of generosity eternally interweaving the lives of the Gonzalezes, Sanders and Pompa went viral and provided some relief to the typically grim US news cycles after various media outlets – including the Tucson, Arizona, television stations KGUN and KOLD – reported it on Thursday. As the station told it, Pompa learned in 2019 that he had only 10% kidney function. He twice weekly began receiving physically taxing treatments from a dialysis machine, which imitated the failing organ’s function by removing toxins from his blood. Sanders explored whether she could donate one of her kidneys to her ailing brother, but she wasn’t a match. “I was disappointed and I felt like, what are we going to do now?” Sanders said to KGUN. Yet she realized what a healthy kidney could mean to someone in need. Still interested in helping someone, a living kidney donor program administered by Banner University hospital in Tucson linked her to Tony Gonzalez, 55. The Gonzalezes, meanwhile, realized Sanders’s brother Pompa, 44, had experienced kidney failure, was undergoing dialysis and needed an organ donor’s kindness himself. And despite thin odds, Tracey Gonzalez was a match, clearing the way for her to donate her kidney to Pompa. Surgeons from Banner removed Sanders’s kidney and flew it to Advocate Christ medical center in Chicago, KGUN reported. In turn, the surgeons in Chicago arranged for Tracey Gonzalez’s kidney to be rushed to Tucson for Pompa’s benefit. The turn of events left Pompa and Tony Gonzalez among about 17,000 people in need of a kidney donation who receive one annually. More than 101,000 people in the US need that particular organ donation each year. And about 12 people die daily waiting for that donation without getting it, according to the National Kidney Foundation. Banner hospital’s Aneesha Shetty said to KOLD that donors who are living can narrow that supply-and-demand gap. “The gap between people waiting and the demand and supply just keeps expanding,” Shetty told the station. Both families met and thanked each other over an emotional video conference call on Thursday. With reporters and others observing, Pompa thanked the Gonzalezes and Banner, saying: “It’s been a long journey.” Pompa explained how he wanted to go on camping and hunting trips once he was better while his sister said she looked forward to traveling with her husband, according to the Chicago Tribune. The Gonzalezes discussed their dreams of a European vacation. “Because of you, you saved my husband’s life, and now I have more of a future with him,” Tracey Gonzalez said to Sanders and Pompa. “So, thank you.” Tracey’s husband swatted away an attempt by Pompa to call him “Mr Gonzalez”, as the Chicago Tribune reported. It’s “Tony, please,” Gonzalez said. “We’re connected now.”