World's Largest Kidney Exchange Gives 14 People New Chance at Life

June 15, 2010— -- In the nation's capital, a circle of strangers is now connected for life.

Beginning last month, 14 donors gave their kidneys to 14 people who desperately needed them in the largest kidney exchange in history.

Watch "World News" tonight on your ABC station for Lisa Stark's report.

Between on May 26 , doctors performed a highly coordinated medical dance, conducting 28 surgeries over nine days in four different Washington, D.C. area hospitals.

Today, the donors and recipients all met for the first time in a room full of hugs, tears and gratitude.

One face that was missing from the crowd was the woman who started the chain, Jennifer Whitford, a 24-year-old Florida woman who died last month in an accident.

Her mother, Denise Milliken, chose to donate her daughter's organs, and she was there today to meet the woman who received her kidney, Brenda Wolfe, 44, of Mt. Airy, Maryland.

"It gives me comfort to know that Jennifer helped someone who really needed it," Milliken said.

Wolfe's grateful husband continued the chain, giving a kidney to Gary Johnson, 63, whose wife then donated... and on and on.

Click here to view a chart detailing all of the surgeries.

"The logistics are quite daunting," said Dr. Keith Melancon, director of kidney and pancreas transplantation at Georgetown University Hospital. "It is quite difficult to get all the pieces to fit together like a puzzle."

A majority of the people involved in the exchange are African-American, which is particularly important because many minorities struggle to find kidney donors. Of people waiting for a kidney, 61 percent are non-white, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Minorities have a higher "likelihood of building up these antibodies" that make transplantation difficult, Melancon said. "These large exchanges will allow more and more of those patients, the most difficult to transplant patients, to be transplanted."