Long Island teacher donates kidney to colleague she barely knew as bucket list moment

Here’s generosity you can’t teach.A Long Island middle school teacher helped save the life of a colleague she barely knew, by donating a kidney in what she called a “bucket list”-item act of mercy.“I believe in the beauty of life and that we only get one,” said Maggie Goodman, who gave the kidney to fellow educator Thomas Coveney at IS 73 in Maspeth, even though the pair rarely ever talked before the operation.“I don’t regret it…if I could donate a second one, I would,” added the 34-year-old teacher of special needs students.Goodman first got word that Coveney, a 47-year-old eighth-grade social studies teacher she barely knew, was in dire need of a transplant after his mother, Judy Cataldo of Bellmore, shared an SOS flyer on Facebook last November.“I didn’t even know I had him as a friend,” said Goodman, who described their interactions as no more than hello and goodbye.The Rego Park man had been painfully battling focal segmental glomerulosclerosis for a decade and was put on a donor list half a year ago.

The married father of a young girl, who estimates he would have needed dialysis within two years, told The Post the “scary” diagnosis first haunted the wonder of, “Am I going to die?”“Getting the kidney now, before I had to go on dialysis, was a lifesaver,” Coveney, the primary “breadwinner” at home, said.“It saved my family, and I continue to work.”North Shore University Hospital transplant Dr.

Ahmed Fahmy also said that Goodman’s actions put Coveney, who plans to return to school by May, in a position for longevity.“People who receive a living donor kidney do far much better than people who receive a deceased donor.”The adventurous Goodman of East Atlantic Beach, who loves solo travel and has been skydiving, said the choice to intervene was a no-brainer because of similar circumstances she witnessed as a teenager in school.“A classmate of mine I wasn’t close to had leukemia,” she said.“I just remembe...