Photo courtesy Banner Health A nurse examines Violet Lopez at Good Samaritan Hospital.

Forty years ago, Violet Lopez had a serious decision to make: The Mesa social worker needed a kidney transplant and, worse yet, there were no doctors in Arizona doing that kind of surgery.

But as Lopez and her family prepared to travel out of state, she was given another choice. Good Samaritan Hospital at 12th Street and McDowell Road wanted to perform the first kidney transplant in the state, and doctors wanted Lopez as their first patient.

Lopez, just 25 years old, didn’t blink. Her brother agreed to donate a kidney for what ultimately was a successful surgery.

“I just knew that this was the right thing…. I guess ignorance is bliss,” recalls Lopez, now 66 and living in Phoenix.

The surgery brought Lopez instant, if temporary, fame. Well-wishers came to the hospital waiting room for word of Lopez’s condition and also sent her cards, handkerchiefs and other get-well mementos. Newspapers eagerly covered the story, reporting on everything from Lopez’s medical care to her stylish hairdo.

Lopez’s new kidney lasted 12 years, and she has since had two others. But now she has begun having kidney problems and doesn’t know what her medical future holds. Still, she’s certain of the choice she made in 1969, which paved the way for roughly 2,900 kidney transplants (and counting) at the hospital known today as Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center.Fusce purus nulla, convallis nec, aliquet sed, accumsan