Chicago Sun Times
Three years ago, Gail Fink desperately needed a kidney to live. The Jewish marketing manager from the north suburbs posted an urgent plea asking for the “biggest gift of all” on a Web site set up to match living donors with those in need of an organ. That same day, Juan Uribe, a Hispanic Pentecostal minister then living in Texas, checked the Web site after reading a newspaper story about it.
What transpired over the next three years, both families now believe, is nothing short of miraculous.
Not only did Juan Uribe extend Gail Fink’s life by donating one of his kidneys to her. But when Gail sought a surrogate mother because her condition left her unable to get pregnant, Juan’s wife, Leigh Anne, agreed to be a surrogate.
She delivered twins Elliot and Ethan Fink at Evanston Northwestern Hospital two months ago. Why did the Uribes go to such lengths for strangers? “This is something that God wanted to happen,” Juan, 43, says.
He notes that they received some benefit as well. Leigh Anne, 33, a former linguist in the Army, was spared a second tour in Iraq because she had to care for their three children while Juan recovered from a hernia at the site of the transplant incision.
Gail also sees God as playing a big role in her turn of fortune. Speaking as Elliot fell asleep in her arms at the Finks’ Northbrook home, Gail, 47, says of the events that not only saved her life but also gave her and husband Michael, 49, two beautiful baby boys: “It’s been miraculous.”
Both families credit Matching Donors.com. The Massachusettsbased site has led to 64 organ donations in three years, according to founder Paul Dooley. He says donors and recipients typically become close, but what the Uribes have done for the Finks is “extraordinary.”
Her doctors can’t say for sure, but they think it was Gail’s desire to have children that might have triggered her life-threatening condition. She married Michael, a planner for United Airlines, in 2003. After trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant, she underwent three rounds of in vitro fertilization. In the summer of 2004, her kidneys began to fail, and she started dialysis.