Grocery store cashier to donate kidney to customer’s wife
PASCAGOULA, Miss. (CNN) — Workers at Wayne Lee’s Grocery and Market in Pascagoula, Mississippi, take pride in the store’s small town feel, and one cashier is going above and beyond for two of the store’s customers.
The woman’s kindness may just save a life.
Eddie Drummond is a man of routine. Every day he drives from Mobile, Alabama, to get to his job at Ingalls Shipbuilding.
And before clocking in, he always stops by Wayne Lee’s Grocery for breakfast.
He walks to the market’s hot foods section and orders the usual: “Orange juice, grits, eggs, sausage or bacon.”
Employees say Eddie Drummond always greets them with a smile, but one fall morning, a cashier noticed that something was off.
“(She asked) why was I looking so sad? I said my wife wasn’t doing good on dialysis and she needed a kidney transplant,” Eddie Drummond said.
So cashier Leilani Aguirre said, “I’ll give her mine, and he was shocked,” Aguirre said about Eddie.
Eddie’s wife of 32 years, Donnie, said in 2015, she went to the hospital after having trouble breathing for a whole day.
“Doctor said I got there just in time because I had a lot of fluid on my heart, I could have died in my sleep,” Donnie Drummond said.
She was diagnosed with kidney failure and went through dialysis before doctors told her she needed a kidney transplant as soon as possible.
Aguirre teamed up with Eddie to surprise Donnie with the news.
“She said, ‘Is Eddie here? I said, ‘Who? She said, ‘Eddie.’ I said, ‘Baby, what do you want with my husband?’”
When Aguirre explained that she was there to donate her kidney, Donnie burst into tears and screamed with excitement.
The two women turned out to be a perfect match with Type O-positive blood.
Aguirre said she reached out because she’s always wondered what would happen if the shoe was on the other foot.
The Drummonds and the Aguirres grow closer by the day, even spending the holidays together, two families becoming one through an act of kindness.
“You will always be a part of us because you put an extension of my wife’s life and I can’t thank you enough,” said Eddie.
Donnie said the whole experience feels like a breakthrough: “I asked for a miracle blessing and he sent it to me because he’s not done with me on this earth.”
The Drummonds say the surgery will happen later this spring in New Orleans.