Bill Sumiel from Salem, New Jersey was on a waitlist for a new kidney, but was told he needed the kidney sooner because of his age.
Time was ticking for Sumiel to start looking for a donor as he did not have much longer to wait for his spot on the list to come up.
That's when an Uber driver came to Sumiel's medical rescue.
Tim Letts was the 33-year-old Uber driver and Army veteran who came to pick Sumiel up to take him to a dialysis center. Little did he know he was going to do more than just give someone a ride that day.
"On the car ride I tell him of my dilemma," says Sumiel, who lives in Salem, New Jersey. "About halfway home after talking the whole way and slowly becoming friends, Tim tells me that 'I think God must have put you in my car.'"
The two struck up a conversation and hit it off. That's when Letts offered Sumiel his kidney.
"He says, 'If you'll take my name and number, I'll give a kidney to you," Sumiel recalls. "I was shaking so hard I couldn't even write down his name and number."
Letts' kidney was a match, and the operation was a success. The two men have become lifelong friends over a chance encounter in a car ride.
Letts usually works in Cape May County, quite a few miles from Sumiel's home, but lucky for him, he just happened to be in Sumiel's neighborhood at the time of the Uber request.
"Giving a kidney is the gift of life and I feel so fortunate to have that gift. I can almost live my life back to normal, and this work (at the University of Delaware's Exercise clinic for renal rehab) is getting me closer to that every day."
"I know miracles have happened in the past. Maybe they never happened to me, maybe they have. But now I really have those beliefs reinforced."
Letts now lives in Germany but plans to stay in contact with Sumiel through Facebook.
Sumiel is currently doing well. He continues his rehab twice a week and just passed the one-year mark of his kidney replacement surgery.
Source: 6ABC