Given her last name, Lindy Noel, who works for the Columbus Blue Jackets, has heard her share of holiday and gift-giving puns. None was as heartfelt as the one for Aaron Portzline, who has covered the Blue Jackets since 2000. Lindy gave Aaron the gift of life.
“Lindy has handed me a microphone during press conferences probably hundreds of times,” Aaron says. “I never thought she’d hand me an organ.” In this case, Lindy turned out to be a perfect match when Aaron needed a kidney.
Even after receiving dialysis for months, Aaron didn’t want to become the story. Reluctantly, he turned to his followers on social media to share that he needed a transplant and became an advocate for others in need of organ donation. In response, many people volunteered to be tested. His message deeply touched Lindy, who still carried a sense of helplessness from losing her father to esophageal cancer in 2018. “There was no donation to save his life. This felt like something I could do to make a difference in someone else’s life.”
After four rounds of testing, she learned that out of the scores of people tested for Aaron, she was the perfect match. Aaron learned only that a donor had been found.
“I wanted to tell him privately, but I also realized it would be a big story,” she says. “I thought if we recorded something, we could decide later if we wanted to share it.”
So Lindy and the Blue Jackets video team came up with a ruse. She asked Aaron to participate in a video about how the 5th Line, the nickname for the team’s fan base, had supported his search for a donor. Lindy hadn’t decided when to tell him that she was the donor. But when he revealed his family history and that a donor had been found, “I looked at the videographer as if to say, ‘Yes, we’re doing it now.'”
Ever the journalist, Aaron was suspicious: “The whole time, I expected somebody to walk through the door behind the camera, and I was worried about not being able to see them clearly with the camera glare. When she said, ‘I’m your donor,’ I almost fell out of the chair.”
Following the surgery April 26, the two shared updates multiple times a week as Aaron passed tiny milestones. And their story blew up across social media, which didn’t surprise Aaron: “It’s about human kindness, a person stepping forward to sacrifice something so that another may live. Pure, human kindness.”
Aaron returned to covering the Blue Jackets in June. As the months passed, he has needed fewer tests and medications. The NHL honored Lindy for her selfless act in June, but even six months later she remains uncomfortable with the accolades.
“My initial approach to the testing was that everyone was doing this. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that not everyone thinks like that,” she says. “Then and now, I don’t see myself as a hero. But I realize it’s rare.”
And for the first time in a while, Aaron can get excited about the future. He and his wife, Kate, “are already looking forward to Lindy’s wedding next summer.” Just like the rest of Lindy’s family.
“We’re bonded for life,” she says.