She Gave Him Life and Found Love

A WOMAN gave a dying stranger her kidney; he gave her his heart and a baby.

EACH time Ashley McIntyre stares into her daughter’s eyes, she sees glimpses of the man whose life she saved and later married.At age 25, a very ill Danny Robinson was suffering from kidney failure. When kind-hearted Ashley heard about it, she didn’t hesitate to donate one of hers.

Moved by his tragic story, she concluded that although she was not rich or powerful, her working kidney could save a life. Danny was the lucky recipient. Now, the two are proud parents of a little girl.

Just three years ago, Ashley and Danny were strangers. They met for the first time only days before the April 2014 kidney transplant in Lexington, Kentucky, fell in love months later and now have Berkli, born in June 2015. For both parents, she’s a ‘miracle baby’.

Ashley had been working as a customer service representative and hadn’t been seriously dating, when she learned about a young man her own age who would soon die if he didn’t have a transplant. She’d overheard her mother and grandmother speaking in the kitchen about the young stranger and his kidney disease. Danny Robinson was on a Kentucky radio talk show that morning pleading for a donation to save his life. He’d been diagnosed with an incurable renal disease at age 16 and had been on dialysis for two years; his condition was deteriorating. Ashley’s mom Kim McIntyre could be heard commenting, “Can you imagine, after all that boy’s been through, losing his father to cancer and then his house burning down; it’s terrible. If I were healthier, I’d give him my kidney.”

The remark tugged at Ashley’s heartstrings. The next day, January 17, 2014, she called the radio station to volunteer her kidney. “Well, I’m type O and I don’t have any health problems,” she remarked. “He’s so young. It’s devastating.”