How you can help this KC institution save the lives of Americans with kidney disease

On the growing list of nationally regarded Kansas City features and community assets is The PKD Foundation, an organization pioneering research into polycystic kidney disease. The hundreds of active volunteers and many chapters developed by the locally-based foundation boost what is already a rich Kansas City history of advocacy for people battling kidney disease.

The reach of this kidney foundation is inspiring. For me, its presence takes on special and urgent meaning.

Today I want to tell you about Elliot Kaye. He worked with me in Congress as my chief of staff for Missouri’s 6th Congressional District. Now, Elliot needs our help. I’m here for him, and I pray you will be too, as at age 51 he stares down a deadly kidney disease.

There are many others facing the same haunting medical situation. This isn’t just about Elliot. But his story is both inspiring and representative of what is at stake for tens of thousands of people in the United States and millions across the globe.

Elliot served Missouri well. He was relentless in promoting rural economic development in my district, which stretches from Kansas City to the Iowa border. When methamphetamine ravaged many in our communities, it was under Elliot’s leadership that we held a summit with dozens of Missouri sheriffs and then-Drug Czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey. Elliot brought a singular decency and dignity to the office, a blend we don’t see enough in modern politics.

Such was his command of issues and public-minded work ethic that Elliot went on to become a commissioner with the Consumer Product Safety Commission. His job: Protect us from deadly, defective products — often everyday things that can quickly turn from the seemingly mundane to the fatal. 

“He thinks about the packaging around batteries small enough for children to swallow, and the window blinds behind the tragic deaths of restless, wall-climbing toddlers who fatally tangle themselves in what their parents bought with only decorative allure in mind,” said my former press secretary Douglas Burns, now a longtime Iowa newspaper owner. “What we look innocently past in the rush of daily life catches Elliot’s thoughtful, knowing eyes. He thinks about these things so we feel more confident with our purchases. Elliot is on the hunt for the hidden risks of life in an increasingly consumerist culture. He’s one of the people who make a simple purchase of a crib or a portable generator just that — simple and safe, not a family’s worst nightmare.”

As you can see, we need Elliot on the job. I’m proud of what he has done for our country since he left my office. Now is a time to focus on him, though, and far too many Americans like him.

Elliot, who lives in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C., found a faulty product of the worst variety — one inhabiting his body. Elliot, who has risen from bed for thousands of days with our health in mind — the urgency of seeing to it that what we buy doesn’t kill or maim us, or worse, hurt our children, grandchildren — needs one of us to step forward with an organ donation so he can continue to do what he does for our families.

He’s too young for a career of surpassing public-mindedness to end, and it is too soon for him to be taken from his wife, Kanae, and their sons, Noah and Ethan.

So please, if you are inspired by his story, consider donating a kidney to Elliot or so many others in need and with so much left to give.

You can find more information right here in Kansas City at PKDcure.org. Or reach out to the National Kidney Donation Organization, Inc. at (203) 249-4832 or NKDO.org.

This story was originally published January 3, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "How you can help this KC institution save the lives of Americans with kidney disease."