{"id":507015,"date":"2026-10-25T00:04:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-25T00:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/507015\/"},"modified":"2026-10-25T00:04:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T00:04:14","slug":"ucsf-surgeon-has-spent-his-career-transplanting-organs-hes-also-donated-two-nbc-bay-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/507015\/","title":{"rendered":"UCSF surgeon has spent his career transplanting organs \u2013 he\u2019s also donated two \u2013 NBC Bay Area"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the course of his medical career, UCSF transplant surgeon Dr. Chuck Rickert has been involved in roughly 300 transplant surgeries.<\/p>\n

Two of them, however, were different from all the rest.<\/p>\n

Those were the two in which Rickert was the donor, not the doctor.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy life has been so enriched by others,\u201d Rickert said. \u201cAnd I\u2019ve only ever felt that what I have to do and what I want to do is to spread that to others.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tNBC Bay AreaNBC Bay Area<\/p>\n

Rickert\u2019s journey as a living organ donor began in 2008, while he was still in medical school.<\/p>\n

He remembers the moment clearly. He was working in a lab and listening to the radio when he heard a discussion about the value of organ donation. It prompted him to consider something he had never seriously contemplated before.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was this sort of thought process of, well, if the risks are this low, the benefit is this high, why should I not consider doing this?\u201d Rickert recalled.<\/p>\n

Within months, one of Rickert\u2019s kidneys was removed and given to a complete stranger in the hope of saving that person\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDr. Charles RickertDr. Charles Rickert<\/p>\n

The experience also changed the course of Rickert\u2019s own life. He became part of the organ donation community and was so moved by the experience that he decided to pursue a career as a transplant surgeon.<\/p>\n

But even after donating a kidney, and going on to help hundreds more patients through transplant surgery, Rickert felt he wasn\u2019t done.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the last few years, I\u2019ve been seriously thinking about what else, you know, if I could donate more,\u201d he said, adding that he continued to be inspired by other donors.<\/p>\n

Two months ago, Rickert became a living donor again, this time giving a portion of his liver to another stranger.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDr. Charles RickertDr. Charles Rickert<\/p>\n

In deciding whether to donate a second time, Rickert found himself returning to much the same reasoning that led him to give away a kidney years earlier. This time, however, he also had years of professional experience showing him firsthand how living donors can recover.<\/p>\n

\u201cKind of came back to the same thoughts that I had before, which was, well, the benefit is going to be so great,\u201d Rickert said. \u201cAnd the risks, I\u2019m seeing with my own eyes that people do well if they\u2019ve been donors in this way.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Rickert, the decision is an extension of the philosophy that has shaped both his personal life and his career: that the generosity he has received from others is something worth passing along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the course of his medical career, UCSF transplant surgeon Dr. Chuck Rickert has been involved in roughly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[22978,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-507015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-bay-area-proud","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}