Retired central Pa. teacher in need of kidney gets a surprise

When Lindsay Wenrich attended Cedar Cliff High School, she’d casually see George Labecki, an English teacher, in the hallways.

She never had him as a teacher nor did she ever imagine that over 10 years would go by, and they’d cross paths again.

But this time, she’d be in the middle of his New Cumberland living room in a Nittany Lion costume to tell him that she was donating a kidney to him.

The 34-year-old of Harrisburg stumbled upon Labecki’s Facebook post about his need for a kidney after a family friend and former teacher, Kathy Young, shared it in April 2018.

“I was at the right place at the right time,” Wenrich said in regard to coming across the post online.

Labecki, 63, knew he had kidney problems when he was 17 years old and accepted a scholarship for Purdue University’s Navy ROTC program. He didn’t pass the physical because of blood present in his urine.

Two years ago, his kidneys became critical, and within the last year he was placed on the donor list.

More than 7,300 people in Pennsylvania currently are on the waiting list for an organ transplant, according to a news release.

Wenrich is on the bone marrow donor registry, but when it came to donating an organ, it wasn’t something that she ever really considered before, aside from the indication on her driver’s license.

Living organ donations can include one of two kidneys, one of two lobes of the liver, a lung, part of a lung, and parts of the pancreas or intestines,