Angelic Taxi Driver is Perfect Match Donor for Arizona Kidney Disease Sufferer

An angelic taxi driver is a perfect match donor for Arizona kidney disease sufferer, Rita Van Loenen.

“There are better odds of getting struck by lightning,” said 63 year old Van Loenen. “A random taxi driver offering to give me his kidney and all these pieces match. There has to be something behind this. How can this be?”

Well, dear readers, I believe it’s a story of divine intervention.

Van Loenen and her angelic taxi driver, Thomas Chappell, met  more than three months ago.

It actually wasn’t a good beginning because Chappell was half an hour late picking Van Loenen up for a dialysis appointment.

“When I got there she was not happy,” Chappell said. “And I can understand it now. She’s sick and all these things she goes through…The next day, it  just so happens I got her again.”

After that, by pure chance, he was her taxi driver three to four times a month. Last month he brought her to tears when he offered to donate his kidney. Shockingly, doctors found they had the same blood type and that they were compatible.

Van Loenen said, “He calls me all excited. If we were a closer match, we would’ve been siblings. I was ready to fall off the floor.”

The Phoenix taxi driver said he was a man of faith and that a higher power wanted him to step in. “By then, me and the good Lord already had a talk. He said, ‘Tom, you go give her one. It will work.” Chappell said.

Now Chappell has started undergoing the arduous process of donor screening, undergoing tests and exams. 

“This has put a whole new kind of lift in my boots. I never knew what it felt like to give somebody life and that’s what I’m doing,” said Chappell.

The transplant hasn’t been scheduled yet but afterwards Chappell will have to rest between four and six weeks. Following the pattern of everything falling into place, his work is standing behind him and promising to cover his lost wages.

“I’ve had drivers do some pretty incredibly amazing things for no charge. But this is just over the top, ” said Jim Hickey, national sales and marketing director for the company that owns VIP Taxi. “We’re just so proud of him.” 

“Whenever I tell my friends or my family, they just find it so incredible, ” Van Loenen said. “They do call him an angel. My friend says there’s angels everywhere. That’s the right was to capture it.”

Finding an angel in a taxi is a little far fetched but for Rita, her taxi driver is her perfect match donor and her chance to live a normal life. To me, that qualifies Thomas Chappell as a real live angel!