After not speaking for more than 20 years, two childhood friends from Indiana reconnected on Facebook recently -- and changed each other's lives forever.
Allison Buell, of Whiting, Ind., hadn't spoken to childhood friend Margaret Raduske in years when an email from a mutual acquaintance caught her eye. The Northwest Indiana Times reports:
They were strangers most of their lives, meeting face to face less than two weeks ago. The Whiting woman had reconnected with childhood friend Margaret Raduske — now Vazquez — and learned Margaret's husband, Felix, was a diabetic on dialysis and needed a kidney.
“Instantly, she Facebook-friends me,” Margaret Vazquez told CBS Chicago. “She’s like, ‘I got time, I got a kidney. How do I get tested?’”
Buell, who recently lost her job and had some time on her hands, went through the necessary tests, and hoped she could give Felix and Margaret Vazquez the ultimate Christmas gift -- her kidney.
"I have a spare one," Buell told the Times. "I might as well give it away."
Felix Vazquez walked out of Northwestern Memorial Hospital on Christmas Day with a new kidney and a new outlook on life.
“She’s given me so many more Christmases with my husband," Margaret Vazquez told CBS. "How do you repay that? We gave her a coffee maker."
Read more about Buell and the Vazquez family's journey here.