Dee Dee Healy didn't know the name of the person who received her late husband's kidney. And when Bettye Elaine King began speaking to the families of organ donors at a recent Golden State Donor Services event, she didn't know her kidney donor's name either.

But as she told her story – about how two summers ago, when she was 78, she received a new chance at life when a kidney recycled from its first donation recipient was transplanted into her body – there was a gasp in the audience.

"She said, 'My kidney was donated twice,' " said Healy, 49, whose husband, John, died in August 2007 of a brain aneurysm at age 55. "I looked at John's sister and said, 'She has John's kidney.' "

As it turns out, she does.

"We were crying and hugging," said King, now 80, a former school police officer in Southern California who was on dialysis for more than five years after her kidneys failed.

Now King wants to help dispel myths that keep the elderly off organ transplant lists, and she wants to help recruit more African Americans as donors – all with the hope that more people can be saved.

More than 5.6 million Californians have already given consent for organ donation by registering online at www.donatelifecalifornia.org.

"There isn't a hard and fast rule when it comes to the age of organ recipients," said spokeswoman Katherine Doolittle. "Each case really is different.

"You can have a 10-year-old whose outcomes would not be survivable, and you can have an 80-year-old who based on their health would be more likely to be on the transplant list."

More than 1,000 people in the Sacramento area – and more than 100,000 nationwide – are now on the waiting list, hoping for the organ transplants that can save their lives. Almost 30 percent are African American.

"Wealth and race and age have nothing to do with who gets a transplant, or else why would I have gotten mine?" King said. "The only thing keeping you from a transplant is you not taking care of what the doctors and the nutritionists tell you to do."

Many older people have high blood pressure and other underlying health issues that can complicate their candidacy for organ transplants, but King says she followed doctors' orders carefully during her dialysis years, trying to keep herself in good shape.

She moved to Sacramento seven years ago, after she visited a daughter and became too ill to return to Southern California. Now she lives in a cozy town house in the shadow of Arco Arena, writing down her memories for her six children and eight grandchildren, tickled with her energetic new post-transplant life.

A high school drama teacher and one of the co-founders of the El Dorado Musical Theatre, John Healy was diagnosed at age 13 with diabetes, the most common cause of kidney failure. He'd gone through two transplants.

"I donated him my kidney 20 years ago," said Dee Dee Healy, who lives in Cameron Park and works at Red Hawk Casino. "And then his sister, Mary, donated her kidney nine or 10 years ago. That's the one Bettye has.

When he died, John Healy's kidney was available for transplant under the United Network for Organ Sharing's expanded-criteria donor guidelines – which allow use of cadaver kidneys that might be less than ideal in some situations.

"We get it," Dee Dee Healy said. "We get how important organ donation is. This is the gift that gives you a second chance. John had 20 years he never would have had otherwise."

And now King has a new life, too, as part of what the Healy family calls "the fellowship of the traveling kidney." They stay in touch, exchanging frequent e-mails and helping her celebrate her birthday.

"To see someone like Bettye – she's so much like John," said Healy. "She has that zest for life. Nothing gets her down. She never let her disease become who she was. John was that way. He never let his illness define him."

Call The Bee's Anita Creamer, (916) 321-1136.