Sarah and Demarcus: A Living Angel to a Once Stranger

Everyone deserves the chance to live a healthy and productive life. These principles have guided Sarah Podobinski for as long as she can remember.

“I don’t see anybody’s life being of lesser value than anyone else,” Podobinski said. “If you can help someone, I feel like you should.”

Podobinski’s generosity knows no boundaries. Family. Friends. Strangers. Even animals – she runs a dog rescue. It’s all the same to her.

When she came across Demarcus Graham’s Facebook post pleading for a kidney, Podobinski jumped at the chance to donate one of hers to the Columbia County deputy sheriff. She was screened in August 2018, and four months later she underwent surgery at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville to save a man she never met.

“She’s truly an angel,” said Graham.

Prior to the transplant surgery, Podobinski had never been hospitalized or even suffered a broken a bone. All of which begs the question, why did she donate?

“I get asked “why” constantly,” she said pensively. “My response is, why not?”

Having worked as a surgical coordinator, Podobinski witnessed first-hand the fear and misery of patients who were waiting for kidney transplants while on dialysis. She wanted to help.

In doing so, she joined a select group of loved ones, friends and strangers who donated their organs to spare a patient an uncertain future. In 2018, nearly 7,000 transplants were made possible by living donors.

The way Graham sees it, Podobinski’s desire to give is more than common sense. It was divine intervention. Without a kidney donation, he was destined to end up like his sister. She died while waiting for a heart transplant.

“I was meant to cross her path,” he said. “She may seem like a normal person to you, but in my eyes she wears a cape. She’s my hero.”