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The day finally had arrived for Barbara "Kitty" Lee to be reunited with the man who saved her life, but the Woodland Hills woman with the new kidney was running behind schedule.
She woke up late. Her nurse was late. The special Texas-style breakfast she had planned to cook was late on the grill. Even the San Francisco cop who tirelessly tracked her down on the streets of the Bay Area to help get the new kidney was late arriving.
However, her anxieties dissipated when Officer Neal Griffin finally appeared in her driveway.
"I'm so glad to see you. I'm so glad to be alive to see you," Lee said to Griffin. "I just can't get over it."
"You look great, just great," Griffin responded. "I knew it was the right house because I recognized the truck."
It was the black Ford that the San Francisco policeman had hoped would lead him to Lee on June 24 during the hair-raising, adrenaline-filled hours after an all-points bulletin declared that Lee was needed in Los Angeles immediately to be prepped for transplant surgery.
The 56-year-old Lee had prompted the search by inadvertently turning off her cellular phone and transplant organizers had been unable to reach her for hours. But another officer, Tommy Yuen, spotted the truck in Fisherman's Wharf just two hours before the kidney was scheduled to be shipped off to another needy person.
Griffin then took Lee in a wild dash to the airport in his squad car with red lights flashing and sirens blaring. She made it to UCLA Medical Center in time for the procedure.
Doctors said Lee, who inherited a degenerative kidney disease and had been on a national transplant waiting list for 20 months, could have died at any time before receiving the organ.
She is recovering nicely from her surgery and is expected to live a full life, thanks in large part to Griffin.
"If it wasn't for you, I'd still be living on borrowed time. It was like a movie," she told Griffin over a hearty breakfast of eggs, sausage, ham and biscuits.
The blue-eyed officer in a bright Hawaiian shirt and blue jeans had traveled with his wife, Janine, 37, to visit her sister Cathy Mirando, 35, in...