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Tim Letts: NJ man's ride to dialysis center turns into 'miracle' after Uber driver donates him a kidney

Tim Letts donated his kidney to 71-year-old Bill Sumiel, who suffers from diabetes and has had kidney problems for 30 years

SALEM, NEW JERSEY: A former US Army veteran who is now an Uber driver definitely deserves a 5-star rating after donating his kidney to a passenger after meeting him for the first time. Bill Sumiel from New Jersey needed both a transplant and a ride. He was told he needed the new organ as soon as possible because he was suffering from kidney failure due to diabetes he developed decades ago.

In 2021, Christiana Hospital scheduled a dialysis appointment for Sumiel and sent an Uber driver to take him home. When the driver, Tim Letts, arrived, the two immediately struck up a conversation. At the end of the car ride, Letts offered him his kidney. "On the car ride I tell him of my dilemma," Sumiel says. "About halfway home, after talking the whole way and slowly becoming friends, Tim tells me, that 'I think God must have put you in my car.'"

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'If you'll take my name and number, I'll give a kidney to you'

"He says, 'If you'll take my name and number, I'll give a kidney to you'," Sumiel recalled, as per ABC News. "I was shaking so hard I couldn't even write down his name and number." Both the match and the procedure at Christiana Hospital were successful. All it took was a miraculous car ride when Sumiel needed it the most for the two to become lifelong friends.

'Giving a kidney is the gift of life'

Sumiel has described Letts as giving him "the gift of life," adding that he's "so fortunate" to have been given that gift. "Giving a kidney is the gift of life and I feel so fortunate to have that gift. I can almost live my life back to normal, and this work (at the University of Delaware's Exercise clinic for renal rehab) is getting me closer to that every day," he said. "I know miracles have happened in the past. Maybe they never happened to me, maybe they have. But now I really have those beliefs reinforced," he added. 

Letts, an Army veteran, 33, lives in Germany and intends to keep in touch with Sumiel via Facebook. Sumiel just celebrated the one-year anniversary of his kidney replacement surgery and is still going to therapy twice a week.