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When one brave young woman gave a total stranger a second chance at life, her generous act had more profound consequences than she'd ever imagined. 

Payton Dimick, at just 1 year old, became the world’s youngest participant in a chain of paired kidney exchanges between computer-matched donors and recipients. Payton received a kidney from a total stranger, and her father, Jason Dimick, donated one of his to a stranger in return.

A North Jersey toddler received a kidney from a San Francisco woman, and her father donated one of his to a man in Los Angeles on Friday as Hackensack University Medical Center participated in a continent-spanning chain of kidney transplants.

In March, when she was wheeled into the operating room at Newark Beth Israel Hospital, Beth Ard was doing a favor for someone she'd never met. But when her left kidney was removed and placed inside Lavoria Cure, Ard not only became the final donor in a life-altering series of six kidney transplants, she joined an army of volunteers that is radically improving the stingy mathematics of organ transplantation.

In the span of 36 hours, six patients in New Jersey and New York received kidney transplants in March from six living donors—all previously strangers—now connected in a rare six-way "Chain of Life."