Unexpected donor gives woman with kidney disease gift-of-life: 'He's my angel on Earth'

SOUTH PHILADELPHIA - A woman with Stage 5 kidney disease was desperate for a kidney donor when an unexpected person gave her the ultimate gift.

Carolyn Difabrizio, 51, is an employee at South Philadelphia’s Steak Em-Up shop. A beloved worker, who’s known for her big heart, received devastating news at the beginning of 2023.

"I was having a little breakdown because I had just learned that my kidney disease had got to Stage 5, which is renal disease and I was put on a transplant list," Difabrizio said.

She went on to say she’s a diabetic and she caught a bad case of COVID-19 just months after losing her 23-year-old son to an overdose. The grieving mother’s body went into shock after the virus.

"My kidneys blew out. My heart, everything was trying to shut down on me," she stated.

Her doctor started her on dialysis, and she was truly feeling hopeless, until an unexpected encounter with one of her regulars.

"I came in and got my coffee," George Johnson, Jr., explained. "I see Carolyn standing there. She went back and got my coffee. She said, ‘I need creamer,’ and the creamer is usually over here, so I went and got the creamer and gave it to her."

Carolyn continues, "George jokingly said, ‘You want me to do anything else?’ I said, ‘Yeah, you got an extra kidney?’

"I said, ‘Sure,’" George added.

A light joke between the two turned into a life-saving gift.

"She said, ‘Nah-ah.’ I said, ‘Give me the phone number and I’ll go get tested.’ About a week and a half later, I found out that I was a match and I came in back, gave her the paperwork and she started screaming and crying."

Carolyn Difabrizio and George Johnson, Jr.

Just about 11 months later, on December 20th, the two went in for surgery at Temple University Hospital.

"Was it a no-brainer for you?" asked FOX 29’s Shaynah Ferreira.

"Not a single thought. Not a single second thought," George responded. "It feels good that she has more time that she’s been spending with her grandkids and her daughter. She has more Christmases to go with them and everything else."

For Carolyn, the word grateful doesn’t seem to cover what this transplant means to her. "How is this possible? How could it be that out of a million billion people in the world, George was in front of me and he was able to be a perfect match. I just thank God. I thank God and I thank George. He’s my angel on earth."

"Life is a precious gift," Ferreira said.

"Absolutely. And, I got a second chance at it and I’m hoping to make the best of it."