The Ultimate Gift Found Online

This past February, Paul Wagner did an extraordinary thing. In an act of selflessness, he gave away his left kidney to a perfect stranger.

"I wanted to do something nice for somebody," Wagner tells CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews.

That somebody is Gail Tomas Willis, a 70-year-old former opera singer, mother of two, and part-time music teacher, who is now growing healthier thanks to Wagner's kidney.

In addition to Wagner's generous donation, the fact that Willis listed a picture and small profile on an organ donor Web site helped her cause.

Matching Donors, is where Wagner and Willis, donor and recipient, found each other. It's one of a handful of new sites that try to match living organ donors willing to help patients in need of transplants.

Potential donors come to these sites and sort through page after page, appeal after appeal. When Wagner scrolled through these pleas, he stopped at "desperately need your help to live." It was posted by Willis.

"Who could not read that story – 'Desperately need your help to live?' This was a real human being who had a family and whose family wanted to keep their mother. And I just couldn't turn my back on that," Wagner admits.

Organ donations, usually from relatives, and organ transplants generally, are now commonplace in America.

"Transplantation works. It's successful. It's no longer an experiment. It's the absolute best medical therapy," Frank DelMonico, president of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), says.

Frank DelMonico is also a transplant surgeon. UNOS arranges transplants using a system based on donors who are deceased.

When a willing donor dies, UNOS distributes the organs, the heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, even the intestines to the sickest patients ranked on an organ by organ list.

Last year, there were more donors than ever, but far from enough. While there were 28,000 transplants, the number of patients needing them exceeded 90,000. It's a number that's growing by the day.

Roughly 8,000 people die each year because they did not receive an organ transplant in time, reports Andrews. The wait for a kidney, is between 1-6 years.

"The UNOS to me is a dying list. You are waiting to die," says Mike Molinaro, a 52-year-old father of two with a failing kidney. He is on dialysis, and has waited more than three years for an organ transplant.

Molinaro calls his situation, "fairly urgent."

He adds, "I've shared the room, the dialysis room with a number of people who have passed away and I don't want to become of them. It's just a fact. I want to live."

Molinaro went to Matching Donors to fight for his life.

"You've got to go out there and say, 'Here's who I am. Here's what I am about and I need your help,'" he says.

But many doctors believe it's unethical for donors to essentially shop online for someone to help. Dr. Doug Hanto, chief of transplant surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston says organs should go to the sickest patients.

"I strongly believe that the donor should not be able to pick the recipient," Hanto says.

He adds, "Not the person who's got the best story, the best picture on the Web site. That's really our bottom line: that it should go to the person who needs it most."

Hanto fears donations based on a compelling internet story may undermine the fairness of the UNOS list -- which is based on need.

"If people think that because you have the ability to advertise or you're famous that you can jump the list then we're not going to have a system that is fair to everyone on the waiting list and we'll have a free for all," Hanto says.

Molinaro says he doesn't disagree with Hanto's assessment that organs should go to those who are the sickest, but adds "there is no system" set up to facilitate matches.

(Three days ago, Molinaro found a donor on Matching Donors.)

The founders of Matching Donors, Paul Dooley and Dr. Jeremiah Lowney, created it two years ago after Dooley's father died waiting for a kidney. They argue that their site, which has matched 28 transplants so far, does nothing to threaten the UNOS list.

"Were trying to decrease the number of people that die waiting on that list," Dooley says.

Perhaps incredibly, Matching Donors has registered 20 times more potential donors than recipients. And Lowney believes it's because donors want to know whom they are saving.

"Just as if they donate their time or make a financial donation they're interested in knowing where it's going and making sure they feel comfortable who it's going to," Lowney says.

Paul Wagner agrees.

"It's my kidney and I will bequeath it to who I choose," Wagner admits.

Wagner says knowing the recipient's story will bring donors out the woodwork. "If they have a story, if they've read the person's profile or seen their picture, it makes it personal. Helped me to me to make a personal connection with Gail and it made my decision to donate much easier.

But that question -- what motivates the donor -- is one thing that makes everyone nervous. Matching Donors, for example, screens out anyone who asks for money.

Gail Tomas Willis, the recipient of Wagner's kidney, says one overseas donor did try to sell her a kidney, but that everyone else on the site, including Wagner, wanted nothing in return.

"I wanted to do something good. That's my payment. You can't buy that with money," Wagner says.

What Wagner did earn was Willis' grateful friendship. In fact last month, when her son Nico got married, Paul was a special guest. He was the man who saved mom.

"I said this is Paul Wagner, my donor. They all embraced him. It was just wonderful they couldn't stop hugging him, they couldn't stop thanking him for helping me," Willis said.

"When Gail did the dance with her son, I, fortunately, no one was looking at me. I was crying. I was moved."