For many organ transplant recipients, meeting their donor often doesn’t happen, as some donors are no longer living, or the agency organizing the organ transplant has policies to maintain living donor anonymity.
Luckily for George Sharp — a longtime Thurston County tourism promoter and rural program manager for the Thurston Economic Development Council’s South Thurston Economic Development Initiative — the University of Washington’s organ transplant donor program doesn’t have any such policies.
Sharp, now 63, had been battling stage 5 kidney failure and been on dialysis since April 2023. He had been working nonstop throughout his treatment up until Aug. 21, 2024, when he finally went in for the transplant surgery as previously reported by The Chronicle.
His donor? Diane Weaver Simms, 67, president of the Grand Mound-Rochester Chamber of Commerce and a real estate agent with Dream Weavers Real Estate.
“It wasn’t something I decided. It was a calling,” Weaver Simms said.
The pair, now bonded by blood, meet for breakfast every week at Papa’s Diner in Rochester. The Chronicle met with them earlier this week to learn more about what drove Weaver Simms to donate a kidney and the connection they’ve formed since.
Initially, Weaver Simms’ family was hesitant about the proposition of her helping someone with an organ transplant.
“They were all like, ‘What are you doing?’ My niece Billy said, ‘What if someone else in the family needs a kidney?’” Weaver Simms added. “I said, ‘Well, first come, first serve.’”
Sharp stated many others had also entered the kidney donor testing process, but were rejected for a variety of reasons ranging from potential donors being too old or too overweight, to another who discovered they themselves had cancer.
“I estimate there were at least 15 people who told me that they were going to try and go through the process,” Sharp added.
Weaver Simms was actually one of the first people to ask Sharp about the kidney donor process back in the summer of 2023, but he admitted he had forgotten about it until Weaver Simms messaged him last summer.
“She texts me, ‘Congratulations!’ And I texted back, ‘For what?’ She said, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t have told you, the University of Washington just called me and told me you have a living donor and to not do anymore of my tests,’” Sharp said. “That’s when I found out she was going through the process of it, but then that living donor ended up getting disqualified because they found something on her kidney.”
With that particular donor now disqualified, Weaver Simms resumed her own testing process. This began Weaver Simms’s view of donating her kidney as a calling.
However, she had to spend months on a special diet in order to get her lab results to the point where kidney donation was possible. Finally, in the summer of 2024, Sharp got a call from the University of Washington informing him he had an anonymous living donor and his transplant surgery date had been scheduled.
“She and I were in a meeting two weeks before (the surgery) for three hours together. I didn’t ask her because I didn’t know if it was her or not. She didn’t hint at all that she was giving me a kidney,” Sharp said.
Then, a day before the surgery, Weaver Simms jokingly texted Sharp and asked him, “If you receive a body part from a female, does that make you a woman?”
“I said it doesn’t make me a woman, but it does bring me in touch with my feminine side,” Sharp added. “And forever grateful.”
While the two had a working relationship going back to 2012, Weaver Simms now considers Sharp a part of the Weaver family too.
And spending time together isn’t just something they do because of their personal relationship.
“One thing the University of Washington told me was the more time the donor’s and recipient's families spend together, the better the outcome,” Weaver Simms said. “There’s an actual, physical thing that takes place that gives the kidneys a better chance of being successful.”
This weekend, the pair is planning on attending a special picnic the University of Washington is organizing for organ donors and recipients.
While Weaver Simms had initially wanted to remain anonymous, both she and Sharp want their connection to be known publicly to help promote more living organ transplant donorship.
“Seeing the power in the change of my life, we want to share with people the power of living donors, and hopefully encourage other people to consider being a living donor,” Sharp said.
He joked that he had always wanted to be a part of the Weaver family.
“George is now a part of our family,” Weaver Simms said.
“She saved my life, and on Saturdays when I realize I would’ve been driving to dialysis again, it’s a miracle and I start crying,” Sharp added.
