First Capital FCU Helps Employee Find Living Kidney Donor
The York, Pa.-based CU launches a campaign to raise awareness about the need for organ donors and help an employee.
The $310 million First Capital Federal Credit Union in York, Pa., is rallying behind one of its employees, Lorie Hagar, to find a living kidney donor to save her life.
“Eight years ago I was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease. In February of 2022 my doctor told me I had progressed to Stage 5, and I need a kidney transplant to live,” Hagar wrote in a social media post.
Stage 5 means a patient’s kidneys are getting very close to not working or may have already stopped working. The only treatment options include dialysis or a transplant, according to the American Kidney Fund in Rockville, Md., the nation’s leading nonprofit group that works to fight kidney diseases on all fronts.
“Processing this has been no easy task,” Hagar said. “But with the support of my family and friends I have spent the last few months working to get on the donor transplant list, the first step in finding a donor.”
She was placed on the list in November, but knowing that the wait time for a deceased kidney donor is five to six years, she decided to seek a living donor.
Every year, thousands of living donors donate a healthy kidney to a person who has kidney disease, saving them from years of waiting for a kidney from a deceased donor. Living kidney donation is becoming more common, with a record 6,860 living donors having donated a kidney in 2019, according to the National Kidney Registry in Greenwich, Conn., which facilitates living donor transplants. More than 100,000 people need a kidney transplant every year.
To help increase public awareness about the need for living kidney donors and in hopes of helping Hager find one, First Capital launched a Share Your Spare marketing campaign last month, placing posters and yard signs at its branches. What’s more, Lamar Advertising gifted a billboard over four weeks to promote the campaign.
In April, which was National Donate Life month, the credit union staff shared Hager’s story by dressing in blue and green and wearing Donate Life bracelets for National Donate Life Blue & Green Day, bringing attention to the importance of organ donor registration.
First Capital invited the community to support its cause to help Hager find a living donor by visiting her Facebook and Instagram page.
To learn more about how to become a living donor, visit the Donate Life America website.