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Mom of 2 donates kidney to single mom of 2 after seeing flyer at son's Taekwondo studio

Vonchelle Knight, a 50-year-old single mom, searched for a donor for 8 years.
Credit: Amanday Hayhurst via ABC News
Amanda Hayhurst saw the flyer that would change her life -- and save the life of another -- as she and her younger son waited for her eldest son to finish taekwondo class.

(ABC NEWS) -- Amanda Hayhurst saw the flyer that would change her life -- and save the life of another -- as she and her younger son waited for her eldest son to finish taekwondo class.

The flyer told the story of Vonchelle Knight, a 50-year-old single mother of two, who had been searching for a kidney donor for eight years.

One of Knight’s daughters, Courtney Knight, 29, worked at the studio and posted the flyer for her mom.

Credit: Amanda Hayhurst via ABC NEWS
(Courtesy Amanda Hayhurst) The flyer for Vonchelle Knight that caught Amanda Hayhurst's eye is pictured.

“Typically I would never read a flyer like that but it pulled me in,” Hayhurst, 32, said. “I knew before I finished reading that we were going to be a match. I just knew it.” 

Hayhurst, of Decatur, Georgia, did not know anything about the kidney transplant process but thought, “If not me, who? She is on this list and none of her friends and family are a match.” 

Over the next few weeks, Hayhurst underwent extensive testing to see if her kidney would work for Knight, a stranger whom she still had not met.

Credit: Amanda Hayhurst via ABC NEWS
(Courtesy Amanda Hayhurst) Amanda Hayhurst, of Beaufort, Georgia, poses with her sons Reese, 1, and Jett, 9.

Doctors determined in December, nearly two months after Hayhurst first saw the flyer, that the two were a perfect match.

“It felt like Christmas to me,” said Hayhurst, who had only let her husband, Marcus, know what she was doing. “I was so excited to meet her and tell her.”

Hayhurst returned to the taekwondo studio to tell Knight’s daughter about the news first. Then, the pair went to Knight’s house and surprised her upon her arrival from work. 

“We cried for like two hours and just talked,” Hayhurst recalled. “We talked and cried and I held her. It was just really sweet.”

For more news from ABC News, click here. 

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