By Jeremy Duda | Arizona Mirror
Clean Elections Executive Director Tom Collins’ badly needed kidney transplant came by way of an unexpected reunion with an old friend from his college days in Tucson.
In the fall of 2017, Collins’ friends and family spread the word on social media that he needed a kidney transplant. Relatives, close friends, casual acquaintances and even people he’d never met got checked to see if they shared his Type O blood, the first step in determining whether they were eligible to donate a kidney.
Several potential donors had gone deep into the process of determining whether they could give Collins one of their kidneys, only to find out they were ineligible. His sister was turned away over a minor medical problem. One college friend was rejected for a growth that doctors discovered. They told her to keep an eye on it and check back in 10 years if she was still interested in donating a kidney.
