A Michigan television news anchor donated her kidney to a complete stranger — the ultimate “gift of life” that helped a local woman end her desperate five-year wait for a new organ.
Teresa Weakley of WOOD-TV, an NBC affiliate in Grand Rapids, made the selfless decision to donate her kidney after learning about the travails of Jennifer VanderPoel, a mother of one who has had six potential donors fall through over the past three years.
VanderPoel, 49, had to give up her career as an assistant professor at a local university because her chronic kidney disease required dialysis treatments three times per week.
“I’ve just exhausted the people that we know and are willing to donate,” VanderPoel said during an interview with WOOD-TV last December.
“I’m just trying to maintain my faith, that everything happens for a reason. But on the other hand, you know, every year it looks bleaker and bleaker, right?”
Weakley, co-anchor of the “Daybreak” morning news show on WOOD-TV, heard about VanderPoel’s search for a kidney through a mutual friend.
The 40-year-old mother of four young children said she had an intuition that she needed to do something about it — particularly after learning about VanderPoel’s situation during a February 2023 conversation with the mutual friend at a local Chuck E. Cheese.
“I trust those feelings,” Weakley told WOOD-TV.
“When I get an idea in my head, I usually just do it. You can ask (my husband). It’s probably very frustrating sometimes.”
Weakley did some research on the internet and tracked down VanderPoel’s donor search web page in which she wrote: “I’m a wife, mother, daughter, friend, and like you, I’m many other things in this crazy, beautiful life.”
“I very much want to be here for my daughter, to see her graduate, to see her go to college and fulfill her dreams.”
Weakley said that reading about VanderPoel’s childhood lupus diagnosis, which resulted in her kidneys malfunctioning, swayed her.
“That’s part of what hooked me, I suppose,” Weakley said.
“My grandmother had lupus, and she died essentially because of lupus.”
Weakley was just six months old when her grandmother died.
Days after the fateful conversation at Chuck E. Cheese, Weakley went for an evaluation at the local kidney transplant center in Grand Rapids, where she was told she wasn’t a good match for VanderPoel.
But that didn’t deter the news anchor, who learned that the Trinity Health Kidney Transplant Center participated in a voucher program that allows anyone to donate a kidney that would be matched with a better-suited recipient listed in a nationwide database run by the National Kidney Registry.
So Weakley’s kidney would go to a complete stranger somewhere in the US. In return, VanderPoel would receive a voucher good for a kidney from another stranger who’s a better match for her.
“The barrier is always, ‘Oh, I’m not a match’,” Weakley said.
“(But) you don’t have to be. You can donate for someone without donating to them, and if more people knew that it might change things for people who need kidneys.”
After successful surgery in December of last year, Weakley’s kidney was sent to a transplant center in Seattle, where it was implanted in a woman. Weakley’s kidney began producing urine immediately, according to WOOD-TV.
After Weakley’s surgery, VanderPoel grew emotional when she was told by the news station that the anchor anonymously donated a kidney in order to secure a voucher for her.
“You should have told me to have Kleenexes out here! Is she okay?” VanderPoel told WOOD-TV after she learned of Weakley’s kidney donation.
VanderPoel broke down in tears on camera.
“I really can’t put into words how thankful I am for this gift of life, and for giving me the chance to be a wife and a partner and, most importantly, a mother again,” VanderPoel said.
“Words will never express how meaningful, how thankful I am for this gift of life. This opportunity to have a life again, to live.”
VanderPoel received a kidney in September through the registry.
“I’m so thankful to the donor,” said Tom Heft, VanderPoel’s dad.
“(Jennifer’s) mom passed away in January, and she feels like she’s influencing this up there, getting her a kidney. I haven’t been this elated since I don’t know when. For me, she’s always been a perfect daughter, and now I’m still gonna have her.”
