Much more than running buddies

Dan Heins lost both legs to diabetes, had a heart attack and a stroke, and has had quadruple bypass surgery. But he plans to complete the Anoka Halloween 5K run today -- alongside the woman who gave him her kidney last year.

"People think I'm a little bit crazy," Heins, 58, said. "I even had a doctor at the Mayo Clinic ask me, 'Why would you want to run?'

"Why wouldn't I want to run? I can't just sit back and let the world go by."

With little time to get used to the new running prosthetics he received this week, Heins is more likely to walk than run when he and Nancy Volk, 57, are at the 24th annual Gray Ghost run. This week marked the first time that Volk, a former Anoka deli owner, and the customer she knew casually have seen each other since April.

Their story attracted the fascination and donations of well-wishers from throughout the country: Forced by financial hardship to close her Main Street Deli in September 2008, facing possible foreclosure of her home and working three jobs to make ends meet, Volk put her own life on hold in an effort to save Heins.

For three years, Volk, a twice-divorced mother of three grown daughters, had seen how Type 1 diabetes had ravaged his body, costing him his legs to amputation, and sucked away his energy, if not his spirit.

She had talked privately about one day donating a kidney to someone. Then, 20 months ago, one of Heins' kidneys "shut down," he said.

"Dan, can I give you a kidney?" Volk asked Heins while he sat at the Main Street Deli.

"I nearly choked on my cup of coffee," he recalled.

Positively matched

They were a match made in heaven -- both O negative blood types.

Within weeks of donating her kidney to Heins, Volk embarked on a new life of her own.

She returned to her tiny hometown of Vernon Center, in central New York -- 30 miles east of Syracuse, light years from the city that never sleeps and 5 miles from the same Interstate 90 that leads to Minnesota. She now lives in the century-old home in which her mother was raised, caring for an elderly uncle and working for a nonprofit that cares for seniors with disabilities.

"It was good for me to do this," she said. "With the closing of the deli, there was a lot on my mind."

Volk could always find a ray of sunshine, even in the constantly overcast Syracuse area, where college sports fans bleed Orange but the predominant color is gray. On the darkest days, she could think of Heins, her insurance agent.

"Dan is the epitome of optimism," Volk said after the transplant. "Because he has my kidney, I think I'm going to make it, too."

Better than two

Heins says that he and his wife of 30 years, Rosemary, have been walking nearly 4 miles together three days a week. At a recent one-year checkup, he was told that his one kidney is functioning better than most people's two, he said.

"I haven't felt this good in 20, maybe 25 years," he said. "I'd like to run Saturday, and not walk, but things don't always happen in a timely fashion. I've learned to be patient."

Volk arrived in the Twin Cities this week, the first time she'd returned since one of her daughters graduated from college in April.

She, too, has recovered nicely.

"I shouldn't have moved a dryer a month after the surgery," she said. "Pulled a muscle in my back. It's nothing."

She expects her daughters, none of whom is a runner, to accompany her on the 3-mile-plus Gray Ghost run. Because it's Halloween, Heins says he and Volk will wear pirate costumes during the event. But she has talked to her daughters about wearing shirts or holding signs reminding onlookers to donate organs.

The city of Anoka has responded before. When Volk struggled to pay her bills, Steve Ohlsen, one of the retirees who frequented her deli, placed a small wicker box by the cash register. "Nancy's Kidney Fund," it said. Within weeks, more than $1,000 had been donated. Thousands of dollars more came from all over the country -- Kankakee, Ill.; Houston; Duluth, and Vernon Center, N.Y., among others.

"I talk to Dan from time to time," Volk said.

Said Heins: "Nancy is always with me."

Paul Levy • 612-673-4419