When George Magulak got a phone call about his lifesaving gift, it was not from whom he expected.
Magulak had liver disease and spent nearly 2 1/2 years waiting for a liver transplant.
In that time, he had to give up his dentist practice as he was growing sicker and sicker. When he stopped working, Magulak wrote a letter to all his patients explaining why.
David Schodowski, one of his former patients, held onto the letter.
"I was saddened by it," Schodowski said. "George has been my dentist since I was probably 14, maybe 13 years old."
Magulak never gave up hope, but he struggled with his illness. He lost 70 pounds and suffered extreme fatigue. Twice, doctors thought they had a liver for him, but neither worked out.
"There were times that I said 'Julie,' to my wife, 'This is not going to happen. I feel like I'm really really getting sick,'" said Magulak.
In the United States, about 120,000 are waiting for an organ transplant that could save their life. Magulak was featured in a video produced by the University of Michigan that put a single face on the agonizing wait of all of those people.
"We just don't have enough donors. We don't have enough people that have signed up for the donor list in advance," Magulak said. "There's people like me, and I probably wasn't far away, that will die."
But Magaluk's story has a happy ending, thanks to the call he received from his former patient, Schodowski.
"He said 'My patient called me; You're not going to believe this, but they have a friend who is on life support, and they might have a liver for me.' I couldn't believe it," said Julie Magulak, George's wife.
Evan Kimball of West Branch, Mich., was critically injured in a car accident while heading back to college. He had signed up to be an organ donor on his driver's license. Schodowski was a friend of the Kimball family.
"They informed us that Evan was a donor and asked if we knew anybody that would be in need of an organ," Schodowski said.
Schodowski immediately thought of his former dentist.
"I told the Kimballs, 'He's just a good man and well-deserving man, and if anybody should get it, it should be him,'" Schodowski said. "I didn't know the odds. I didn't know a whole lot about it. Alls I knew is I have a liver for George."
While touched, Magulak knew there was no guarantee this liver would be compatible with him.
"It has to match both in size and blood type and that's a rarity in itself. And I said, 'Quite frankly, you're probably barking up the wrong tree.' He says 'Well let me push on," Magulak said.
Pushing on was the right call because Kimball's liver was a match, and the transplant came at the perfect time.
"I think he was really in the last couple weeks to months of being able to still be a good candidate to receive a transplant. So it really was a nick-in-time gift for George," said Dr. John Magee, the transplant director at the University of Michigan Hospital.
Magulak received what's called a directed donation. Magee told Local 4 that is very rare.
"Directed donation probably represents less than 1 percent of the total donation that happens," Magee said.
Magulak and his family are very grateful for the lifesaving gift from Evan Kimball and his family.
"I'm doing fantastic now. just almost beyond good," Magulak said. "He had to be an incredibly amazing young man, and it has to be an incredibly amazing family."
"Our heart goes out to them," Julie Magulak said. "(They) gave us the gift of life, all over again. Our family to be a family, as a whole family. We can't thank them enough and thank Evan."
Schodowski is quick to shrug off any credit in saving Magulak's life.
"I was the messenger in all this. Evan is the true hero," Schodowski said. "His parents will say that he, he was the selfless one, not us. But I think they fail to realize that they raised that boy to the man he was."
Schodowski joined the organ donor registry after receiving Magulak's letter.
"It's a miracle and you know, miracles come true, Schodowski said. "People need to sign up and become donors. You can't take your organs with you."
Kimball donated five of his organs, four of them went to people connected to his family. Gift of Life Michigan said that ties the U.S. record for the most directed donations. Countless other people were helped by Kimball's donation of tissue, skin, and corneas.
The Kimball family hopes his gift will inspire others to join the Michigan Organ Donor Registry. Kimball wore the number 4 when he played baseball and his family has set the goal of registering 4,444 people by the anniversary of his donation.