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About a month after learning of his kidney failure 11 years ago, Rafael Serrano got a kidney from his wife, and for about eight years he felt good. Then he ran into problems. No one in his family had a compatible kidney, but he got a second chance when he received another kidney in the world's second-largest kidney chain ever.

Emily Garcia has just begun a brand new chapter in her life. A life without dialysis, needles and blood transfusions. A life with a more certain future and more time with her family. Garcia, 34, received perhaps the most significant Christmas gift of her lifetime when she received a kidney Dec. 19.

In June 2011, Curtis Hendrix called the Clinic's transplant center to find out how he could donate one of his kidneys. Four months later, following a series of interviews with various physicians and a battery of medical tests, he was approved for the surgery. Hendrix was one of 48 living kidney donors who had surgery at the Clinic in 2011 and one of only two who didn't know who the recipient would be.

The world's largest kidney donor chain has been completed in the US, with 30 patients receiving a kidney from 30 living donors, through the National Kidney Registry, according to World Record Academy.

The world's longest chain of organ donations has been completed in the US, with 30 patients receiving a kidney from 30 living donors. The complicated process lasted for four months and involved 17 hospitals across 11 states.

A donation by a Good Samaritan, Rick Ruzzamenti, set in motion a 60-person chain of transplants that ended with a kidney for Donald C. Terry Jr. Rick Ruzzamenti admits to being a tad impulsive. He traded his Catholicism for Buddhism in a revelatory flash. He married a Vietnamese woman he had only just met. And

Joseph Vohs, an insurance agent with Farmers Insurance in Shawnee, will donate a kidney anonymously in Chicago at the end of the month. Vohs said he hopes the procedure can become more commonplace in the Kansas City area.

Edna Marie Medeiros chokes up talking about how Season of Sharing—The Chronicle's annual giving campaign—helped her move to a larger apartment so her son Antonio could have his own room while recovering from a kidney transplant.

Melissa Arlio is an upbeat, healthy 26-year-old from a big Italian family in Wayne, NJ. With nothing to gain and a good deal to lose (namely, her job) Arlio elected to undergo surgery and donate one of her kidneys to a complete stranger last March. She did so in order to start an altruistic kidney chain through the National Kidney Registry.

They’re not related by blood, but the seven women who work at Loyola Hospital in Maywood have a special bond: They have each donated one of their kidneys to a stranger or acquaintance as part of Loyola’s Living Donor Kidney Transplant program’s “Pay it Forward” program.