The Emotional Moment a Teacher Volunteers to Donate Her Kidney to Her Sick Student
Natasha Fuller, 8, has been in need of kidney for years.
— -- A moving video shows the moment a Wisconsin teacher made the potentially life-changing announcement that she was going to donate a kidney to her student.
Captured by the Oakfield Elementary School District, the video shows the moment first-grade teacher Jodi Schmidt surprised the family of student Natasha Fuller with the news that she was a match to donate a kidney.
To announce her decision to be a donor, Schmidt invited Natasha's grandmother Chris Burelton to the school last week under a guise that the staff wanted to give her a gift for taking care of her granddaughter. She presented Burelton with a pink present with a message inside that she was a match to be a kidney donor for Natasha.
"You? Oh my gosh!" Burelton says in the video before bursting into tears. "Here I thought she was coming to school because she was naughty!"
Oakfield Elementary School Principal Becky Doyle said in the video that Schmidt started the process in December and had just recently found out she was a match to be a donor for Natasha.
"I want to do something for this child," Doyle recalled Schmidt saying. "She found out yesterday that she's a match in two areas. She has talked with her family and her husband."
Schmidt said she felt she was the right person to donate. "I'm so excited," Schmidt says in the video. "I figured I'm O-negative blood and it did just come to me. I think we're all brought to a certain place and time for a reason."
After telling Burelton the news, the staff brought in Natasha to tell her about the donation. But the first-grader was slightly less aware of what the gift meant.
After reading "It's a match," on the card, Natasha thanked and hugged her teacher. But after the adults asked if she knew what match meant, the student shook her head no.
She did get more excited when she found out some sweets may be involved.
"We can get a popsicle where I was ... in the hospital?" Natasha asks before giving her teacher a second hug.