South Carolina woman donates kidney after seeing strangers plea for help

West Ashley, S.C. (WTVD) -- A South Carolina mom is feeling grateful after a good Samaritan answered her desperate plea for help.

Lashonda Pugh wrote a message on the back of her car pleading for a kidney donor to save her son's life.

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Starr Gardy, 40, saw the message and decided to help. She was able to donate her kidney to Daniel Jones through the living donor program at the Medical University of South Carolina.

"I just, I can't really explain it, it just completely moved me and I just, I took a picture of it and I went in Walmart and I was shopping," said Gardy. "And all I could picture was, 'there is someone in here who has this weight on their shoulders.'"

Pugh is grateful.

"God came to me and was like, you have to put the message out there," Pugh told WCIV.

Jones is now looking forward to a life free of dialysis.

"It's a lot. Knowing that I have her organ in my body, we're family now," said Jones, 24. "She's not just a stranger anymore, she's my aunt."

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"Her mom, her dad, her husband, her kids...all her other family we are family now. I don't care who don't like it, we are family," Pugh said.

Even though the hospital keeps organ donor and recipient information completely confidential, both Jones' and Gardy's families were in the waiting room and struck up a conversation.

Gardy's recovery will take about six weeks.

Jones is expected to go home on Saturday.