Colleagues Donate Hours So Living Donor Won't Lose Wages

A group of Washington, DC, municipal employees have helped facilitate a colleague's desire to be a living kidney donor by donating some of their own paid vacation time to enable her to continue receiving a salary while recovering from the donor surgery.

Four of the six members of the communications staff of the mayor donated 78 hours of paid vacation to Terri Godwin, 30, who donated one of her kidneys to her sister Natasha, 32, at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina.

"It was just no way I couldn't do it," said Betsy Peoples, one of the vacation donors. "I just thought [giving her kidney] was the most unselfish act that anyone could do. I was speechless."

"It's not just, can we get by without her for a couple of months?" said communications director Tony Bullock. "There was a desire to help her financially."

The gift of paid hours by her colleagues left Godwin deeply moved. "I was just humbled," she said.