Pittsburgh man known for acts of kindness donates kidney
Jon Potter was filling up his car at a Pittsburgh, Pa., gas station when a woman approached and asked for a ride to a battered-women’s shelter. He said no.
She walked away, and he quickly felt a wave of regret. He got out of his car to look for her, but she was gone. Feeling terrible, he vowed to be kinder next time a stranger needed help.
A few weeks later, in the spring of 2015, he saw his opportunity when someone on a Pittsburgh Reddit group needed a hand installing a television antenna. Potter, who is handy, did it for no charge and felt great about it. Then someone on the same Reddit group asked for a cat sitter, and he jumped at the chance.
“It snowballed from there,” said Potter, 29. “I decided that for the next year, if anyone asks me for help, as long as it’s legal and as long as it won’t harm anyone else, I’d do it. It sounds ridiculous, but I did it.”
Soon, he was committing near-daily acts of kindness in the Pittsburgh community: helping someone repair vinyl siding, moving furniture, fixing a leaky roof, changing a grandmother’s tire on the side of the road. All for free. He even raised $700 for a teen in his community who was injured while stopping a hate crime.
His one year of goodness was so fulfilling that he has turned it into a four-year stretch of saying “yes” to random requests from strangers, gaining Potter fame in Pittsburgh for his hundreds — perhaps thousands — of kind acts, winning him awards, and making him the subject of local media attention.
“There is this Reddit lore of him,” said his friend Johann Guldenschuh, who met Potter when Potter agreed to help Guldenschuh and his wife move to the Pittsburgh area in 2017. “There are all these legends of these cool things he’s done, and they’re true.”
On Reddit, person after person gushes about how Potter (username pghparagliding) offered to help when it was most needed.
Potter upped the ante on his generosity last week, donating a kidney to a stranger after seeing on Reddit that a Pittsburgh father of two was in need of a transplant.
The man, Michael Moore, 57, had put out a plea on social media through his daughters.
“What are the repercussions of giving a kidney to someone?” responded Potter, who saw the post late at night. “I’m at the point in the night where I’d be open to giving a kidney to a stranger.”
Never one to back down from a good deed, he found out he could live a long and healthy life with one kidney. Then he got tested and learned he was a perfect match for the man in need.
He had to do some persuading to get his wife of about year, Rachel Adler, on board, but she came around to the idea. The surgery was Aug. 13, and both men are recovering and doing great.
“I’m just blown away by the fact he was willing to do it,” Moore said, detailing the many appointments, tests and rigorous screening process Potter went through.
In the months before the donation, the two men met and became close friends. Per doctors’ orders, Potter had to lose 20 pounds before the surgery, which he did. He also overheard Moore saying he was going to install a French drain in his backyard and offered to help.
“He goes, ‘I won’t charge you anything for it,’” Moore said, laughing. He insisted on paying Potter for his work.
Before Potter’s do-gooder lifestyle began four years ago, he was a paragliding flight instructor, and most of his work hours fell on weekends. He was generally free on weekdays and had what he described as a bare-bones lifestyle. Instead of trying to earn more money during the week, he made the decision to dedicate himself to helping others.
It has had a profound effect on Potter, who says he has struggled with depression and anxiety since he was 8 years old. Last year, he was diagnosed with high-functioning autism and said the realization was a “huge puzzle piece” in his life. He said that pushing himself to interact with people by helping them has given him new appreciation for others.
“I trust a lot more now than I did in the past,” he said. “I trust people’s intentions more.”