You know if there’s a story about t-shirts and dads we’re going to be all over it. If it restores my faith in the goodness of people at the same time? Even better. This story definitely qualifies.
According to WPIX in New York, a father of 5 from New Jersey got a life-saving kidney transplant after making himself a t-shirt looking for a donor and wearing it around Disney World.
Robert Leibowitz wore the shirt for a week at Disney, prompting countless other park-goers to take photos and videos of the message to share to their social media feeds. The shirt read “In Need Of Kidney O Positive” along with his phone number.
Rocio and Juan Sandoval, an Orlando couple at Disney celebrating a birthday, decided to post a photo of the shirt to Facebook.
“I just wanted to do something nice for somebody,” Sandoval told WTSP-Tampa Bay about posting the photo. “Honestly, I was hoping it would get shared 100 times in one day.” It’s been shared over 90,000 times.
One person that saw it was Richie Sully, a fellow single dad from Indiana. He has two girls, Layla, 11, and Emma, 5.
He was donating blood to help Hurricane Harvey victims when a friend showed him that viral Facebook post. Sully called the number and left a voicemail.
"Hi, my name is Richie. I saw your post. I have an extra kidney. I’m O-positive. You’re more than welcome to have it," Sully said in his message.
Sully took off from work and paid to stay in a New York hotel for two weeks. He's spent time with Liebowitz every day.
"We walked around Manhattan for, like, six hours and we had sushi and he took me to Times Square and we talked about music and about being dads and things like that and really hit it off," he said.
Sully underwent surgery beside his new friend last Thursday at New York Presbyterian Hospital.