Customer donates kidney to cashier

Myra de la Vega, a cashier at a Jewel-Osco store in Evanston, Illinois, thought that the man she knew only from her checkout line was joking when he told her he'd donate the organ she so desperately needs. But Dan Coyne, a Chicago Public Schools social worker, was serious.

So, on Friday morning, surgeons at Northwestern Memorial Hospital will remove one of Coyne's healthy kidneys and transplant it to de la Vega, a 49-year-old Filipino immigrant and mother of two who was diagnosed with renal failure three years ago and has continued to work even as she's undergone dialysis ever since.

The transplant "will give me another 25 or 30 years of life," de la Vega, clearly still astounded by her customer's generosity, said Tuesday as she sat with Coyne at Pershing East Magnet School, 3113 S. Rhodes, where he works. "It's unbelievable: a complete stranger offering his kidney to me."
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