It started with a bumper sticker looking for a kidney donor and ended up with an award for volunteerism.
Dunwoody resident Libby Pollack 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, Pollack 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,’” Pollack said.
At first, Pollack 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, Pollack 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, Pollack 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,” Pollack 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 Pollack, wasn’t a perfect match. He made an altruistic donation anyway, like Pollack, and was matched with a person who had been given “a one-in-a-million” chance to get a compatible kidney.
Pollack’s donation did not go unnoticed. On Jan. 23, during Shabbat services, Temple Emanu-el Senior Paster Spike Anderson presented her with the Shirley Schiffer Volunteerism Award. Izzy and her family were on hand to celebrate Pollack’s…
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