If you thought Facebook was about finding and chatting with long-lost friends, think again. This is the true story of how a life was saved because of this social-networking site. Ms. April Capone Almon, mayor of East Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A., donated a kidney to a constituent who was her “friend”on Facebook and gave him a new chance at life.

Carlos Sanchez, a 44-year-old father and office administrator whose kidneys were failing because of diabetes, sent out a request on Facebook for a kidney donor on his doctor's suggestion. It said his friends and relatives had all been tested and couldn't donate a kidney, which he needed desperately.

Capone Almon was the first person to respond and said that she would get tested to see if she was a possible match. Sanchez thought it was a joke at first, but discovered that she was serious. “I wasn't putting too much faith in it,” Sanchez said. “I didn't want to get my hopes high. But at a point she made me feel so comfortable that I started feeling maybe this was meant to be.”

Capone Almon, a Democrat, was running for a second term as mayor at the time but kept the details of her medical plans a secret. She won the election as they awaited word on when she could donate the kidney. Finally on April 8, 2010 doctors at Yale-New Haven Hospital removed Capone Almon's left kidney and transplanted it into Sanchez.

Capone Almon says, “Would I have been his donor without Facebook? We'll never know. But Facebook allowed me to sit quietly in my office and say to myself, You're up! Answer this call!”