Pastry Shop Owner Needs Gift Of Life, Columbia South Carolina

Written by

Nate Stewart | WLTX, Columbia SC

Columbia, SC (WLTX) - Customers are showing their support for a pastry shop owner who needs a kidney.

Frank Toth owns the Pastry Place on Fort Jackson Boulevard. Toth says he loves his job. "It's like an actor who loves to do money and they say they can't believe they get paid for it," Toth says.

Toth and his wife Sharon started Pastry Place together .  "You have a lot of time to do the things that you wanna do."

But with each passing minute, the time they spend with each other is spread thin, after doctors told Frank he had a serious medical problem. "I need a kidney, very urgently."  Frank has been on dialysis for two and a half years; if he were to stop, he'd only have 48 hours to live.  "Sometimes I sit there just my wife and I just bawling, because we know what a struggle it's been to get to this point."

Sharon says they've had seven customers walk through their front door offering to donate their own kidney; however, all were rejected as potential matches. "We've made so many friend we never feel we're without family."  Their son-in-law Jody has offered his kidney. "[He is] the kind of man he is the kind of person I strive to be," he says.

Frank was even recieved the go ahead to receive the transplant, but in the final testing stage, Jody didn't get the same results.

"The day Frank got his approval letter is the day that we got our denial." "If they feel like they can donate a kidney and they know someone then it's the gift of life, that's really what we're pushing, not just for me but for anybody who needs a kidney."

The chime of the front door may be sweet for Frank and Sharon, it's the sound of hope.  "When I start to get really really concerned, in walks an angel."

According to the National Kidney Foundation of South Carolina, right now there are more than 1,000 people in need of a kidney transplant.