Army veteran donates kidney to Salem man after Uber ride

A 33-year-old Army veteran from Cape May County turned a routine Uber ride home from Vineland into a kidney donation. Timothy Letts drove Bill Sumiel, a 73-year-old ChristianaCare patient from Salem, after a visit to the Vascular Institute in Vineland, and learned during the 40-minute trip that Sumiel had been on the kidney transplant list for more than three years.

That conversation led to a milestone at ChristianaCare on Dec. 7, 2021, when the two men underwent surgery. Sumiel had been a ChristianaCare patient since 2017 and had a history of diabetes. Letts stepped forward as a living donor after hearing how long Sumiel had waited.

Before donating, Letts went through medical review, paperwork, testing and meetings with an independent living donor advocate. The process is meant to make sure donors give informed consent and that their rights are protected. Letts said the experience was smooth and that he was never pressured, adding that staff made his care the top priority.

Nationally, more than 100,000 people are waiting for organ transplants, and Donate Life America puts another person on the waiting list every eight minutes. Living donor kidney recipients have the best outcomes, and a living donor can be a stranger, not just a relative, spouse or friend.

ChristianaCare’s Kidney Transplant Program is based at Christiana Hospital and is the only adult kidney transplant center in Delaware and the only one between Philadelphia and Baltimore. Since opening in 2006, the program has performed more than 400 transplants.

In 2025, Christiana Hospital facilitated 60 organ donations that resulted in 150 transplanted organs, along with 122 life-enhancing tissue donors. ChristianaCare works with the Gift of Life Donor Program and has earned HRSA’s top Platinum Award for support of organ and tissue donation.