Man steals donation jar for girl's kidney transplant fund

Originally published in the Texarkana Gazette and writeforarkansas.org on March 16, 2011.

PRESCOTT, Ark.—A truck stop patron’s sticky fingers has held up a 12-year-old girl’s search for a new kidney.

Surveillance video shows a balding, middle-aged white man entering Love’s Travel Stop on Interstate 30 at about 1:40 a.m. March 7. He took a donation jar from the counter and ran out the door.

The jar, which held about $30 in bills and change, was collecting funds to cover a kidney transplant for 12-year-old Brandy Clifton, whose father Larry Clifton is an assistant manager at the store.

“She’s had the kidney disease diagnosis since she was 5, so we’ve been fighting this disease for seven years,” Clifton said. “We finally just lost the battle, so this past Friday, they had surgery and took both kidneys out.”

Brandy is recovering from her surgery at Children’s Hospital in Little Rock. She is up and walking again and scheduled to return home within two weeks, but she will require dialysis several times per week until she can find a kidney.

That won’t happen anytime soon. Hypertension and other complications of kidney failure have kept Brandy off the list to receive a transplant. Clifton hopes now that his daughter’s kidneys are gone, her blood pressure will stabilize and she will be deemed eligible for a transplant.

Then there’s the question of payment. Medicaid covers much of Brandy’s dialysis costs. Clifton isn’t sure how much a transplant would cost the family, but he wants to be ready.

Police are continuing to look for the thief. Prescott Detective David Thomason said the man used the front door, not the side door used by truckers, which could mean he’s a local.

But the man just as easily could have been passing through, which would make the theft much harder to solve, Thomason said.

“It’s just kind of a sorry crime to do,” he said.

Clifton was disappointed by the theft, but the loss of $30 won’t make or break his daughter’s chances for a new kidney. He remains stoic.

“The devil done his job,” he said. “I hope the Lord does his.”