Corporate pilot donates ‘spare part’
For a pilot, there are many ways to describe heroism; risking one’s health and possibly career to alleviate the suffering of another certainly ranks among
For a pilot, there are many ways to describe heroism; risking one’s health and possibly career to alleviate the suffering of another certainly ranks among the definitions. Dale Hofstetter, 49, a corporate pilot for St. Louis-based Monsanto, did just that in January when he donated a kidney to the son of one of the company’s flight administration staff.
Hofstetter, a professional pilot for nearly 30 years, first noticed 15-year-old Jackson Simmons at the corporate hangar last summer, while the boy waited for his mother to take him to a dialysis appointment. Hofstetter then learned the boy suffered from congenital kidney failure and that three years ago his body had rejected the donor kidney he had received soon after birth.
