Monday, April 28, 2025
Atlantic Beach resident Maggie Goodman taught everyone she knew the power of kindness when she offered to donate one of her kidneys to a co-worker in need.
In late October, 2024, Goodman, 34, a sixth-grade special education teacher at I.S. 73, learned that her kidney was a compatible match for fellow middle school teacher Thomas Coveney, 47, who had been battling focal segmental glomerulosclerosis for a decade.
Goodman said that she and Coveney weren’t well acquainted, but she learned that he needed a transplant through his mother’s Facebook post, and immediately got tested to see if she was a match.
Once she learned that she was, Goodman said, she was happy to help her colleague. Donating to someone in need was something she had always wanted to do.
“It’s something — weirdly, perhaps — that I have always had on my bucket list,” Goodman said. “If the opportunity presented itself, I would love the opportunity to donate an organ or bone marrow or something that can help someone. I felt so lucky to be able to donate my organ to him. He deserves to be here and have a life with his wife and 7-year-old daughter.”
After his kidney began failing in 2024, Coveney was reclassified as higher risk, and moved up the transplant list last August. He had formed a team of family, friends, and school colleagues to help spread awareness and find a living donor who was a viable match.
Coveney emphasized that his mother, was the one who really took charge, contacting relatives and community members on social media to try to find a match for her son. Thomas heard in January, 2025, that one of his co-workers was going to be the one to donate a kidney, and was shocked when he discovered who it was.
“My friends told me that it was going to be someone from work who was donating, but I didn’t know who,” Coveney recounted. “Then, on a Friday about three or four weeks ago, Maggie came into my classroom with a jar of kidney beans, and asked if I would take her kidney. I think there aren’t a lot of people on this earth like that. She’s one of the kindest, most selfless people that has ever existed. It was a real surprise.”
Goodman said that the decision wasn’t an easy one, and that she consulted a lot of people, including her Ob-Gyn, to address concerns about pregnancy. Ultimately, she was encouraged to donate, and assured that she was healthy enough to go through with the surgery.
The transplant was performed at North Shore University Hospital, in the Petrocelli Surgical Pavilion, on Feb. 10. Coveney said that he is still in recovery, but feeling a lot better, and more energized. He added that he hoped to return to teaching in May.
Goodman, who was in the hospital for two nights and three days, has already returned, and feels great, she said. She takes daily walks and stays active, as her doctors recommended.
Goodman credited her family and her alma mater, Boston College for her decision to go ahead with the transplant, and encouraged others who can to be donors.
“I do credit my mom a lot — she raised all of us, and I think that any of my family members would have done the same thing if they can,” Goodman said. “I also went to Boston College, and the big slogan there is ‘Men and woman for others,’ and that has been instilled in me from an early age. I felt very lucky to be able to donate my kidney to him.”
Ahmed Fahmy, a transplant surgeon who was involved in the procedure, credited Goodman for stepping forward as a living donor to help her colleague.
“There’s about 95,000 people on the transplant waiting list waiting for a kidney transplant,” Fahmy said. “Last year, in 2024, there was about 25,000 transplants performed in the United States. About 6,000 of them were from living donors. This gap of supply and demand is the gap we want to fill, and why we look forward to people like Maggie.”
Fahmy emphasized the importance of living donors, explaining that recipients who receive kidneys from living donors tend to fare much better.
Coveney became emotional when talking about how grateful he was for Goodman. He presented her with flowers of gratitude during his return visit to the hospital on Feb. 26.
“It was really a surprise,” he said. “I just think that she is like an angel — she saved my life.”
