Former College Roommate Donates Liver To Friend

A former college roommate is donating liver to his friend he hadn’t seen in 21 years. Steven Robinson, 57, was on a family road trip to Detroit when he realized his old friend, Richard Koonce, lived in Ohio. Robinson called Koonce as they were passing through. Koonce, 62, invited Robinson and his family over for an unplanned visit. When the family arrived, Robinson was taken back by Koonce’s considerable weight loss.

Koonce has been battling a rare liver disease called primary sclerosing cholangitis, or PSC, since 2019. PSC is a potentially life-threatening, incurable, and rare, yet chronic liver disease that the American Liver Foundation says causes scarring in a person’s bile ducts, leading to infections, tumors, and severe liver failure.

Koonce had tried various treatment options with little success, and was seeking a living donor for a liver transplant. Since the liver is the only organ in the human body that can grow cells and regenerate itself, donors can give part of their liver to people who need them and regrow their own. Robinson did not hesitate, offering to donate a piece of his liver to save his friend. Robinson was a match with the same blood type.

The chance encounter between the pair of former HBCU college roommates last summer set the stage for the life-saving operation that was performed on Valentine’s Day at a Cleveland hospital. Robinson will be in recovery for six to eight weeks and Koonce’s recovery will take about six months. Robinson said “I think it was a spiritual thing, I always had love for the brother and I could see something was wrong. I could see it in his eyes.”

The unlikely story highlights the dire need for more Black organ donors in the United States, where Black people make up the largest share of minorities in need of organ transplants, according to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health report. Nearly 84% of organs received from Black people in 2020 were from donors who had died, according to study, but only about 16% of Black organ donations that year came from living donors.

Prior to his college roommate’s decision, Koonce had only shared news of his condition with a small group of friends. “I couldn’t ask any of them to do this,” he said. “But if it’s something you want to do, I can give you the information. That was my position. “I am so truly grateful for the gift of life that God has offered through my friend, Steve Robinson, who decided almost within the very minute that he learned of my disease to step up and do whatever he could to help me,” Koonce said.