Texas Health Fort Worth is celebrating a major milestone in its kidney donation program.
The credit in part goes to a young man who wanted to give something meaningful to the man whose given him so much.
Alonso Lara took in Saaith and his two sisters when Saaith was just three months old and, as a single parent, raised them as his own.
Just days before Alonso was to undergo a kidney transplant at Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth, Saaith, 23, let his father in on a secret he’d been keeping: He would be the one donating the kidney.
“He thought it was coming from someone else,” Saaith said in a news release sent to NBC 5. “He started crying and thanking me for doing that even though he didn’t want me to. I couldn’t hold it back either. I was just glad I was able to do that for him. He’s done so much for me. If I could have him around for so much longer, why wouldn’t I?”
Saaith was one of 22 living kidney donors at Texas Health Harris Methodist Fort Worth in 2025, an all-time high since the transplant program started in 1986.
The hospital also set a record last year for the highest number of kidney transplants performed in a single year.
In all, Texas Health Fort Worth performed 71 kidney transplants in 2025 to beat the previous record of 65 transplants set in 1998 and far outnumbering the 56 kidney transplants performed in 2024.
The 22 living-donor surgeries topped the previous record set in 2002 by two and were nine more than in 2024.
Also in that number was a Fort Worth man who, just four days after receiving his transplant, married his fiancée, Cynthia McIntosh, in a hospital chapel wedding organized by hospital caregivers. NBC 5 featured their story last March.
“All of these wonderful news stories inspire other living donors to come forward,” said Eric Siskind, M.D., surgical director of the transplant program at Texas Health Fort Worth. “From the very beginning, we’ve led with love — and that has been our greatest strength, showcasing the triumphs of the human spirit.”