He offered a stranger his kidney in a bar

Mark Scotch walked into a Louisiana bar in 2020 and walked out, eventually, with one fewer kidney. He tells it as a joke. It is close to the truth. Scotch, then 64, got talking to Hugh Smith, 56, who mentioned he spent 10 hours every night on dialysis. "It went from this enjoyable experience of meeting him to thinking, 'Oh my God, this guy's life is just horrible,'" Scotch recalls. He offered a kidney on the spot. Instead of giving directly to Smith, Scotch joined a voucher scheme: his kidney went to a stranger he still knows nothing about, which pushed Smith to the top of his local waitlist. Five months later, Smith got his transplant from another donor. More than 90,000 Americans are currently waiting for a kidney. Scotch's wife Lynn has since donated one too, and Mark, now 70, has cycled more than 12,000 miles telling people this option exists.