DUKE CENTER — Local resident Ronda Skoken is going all the way to help somebody get a new kidney.

The person she most wants to help is Fred Haskins of Rob Roy Road. He has been on the transplant list at a Pittsburgh hospital for some time.

Skoken is not a match for Haskins, but she learned of the PAIR Partners Program from him. It is operated out of the Buffalo (N.Y.) General Transplant Clinic. Genetic testing is done for scanning coding into a computer. Once a month, the computer checks for a match.

“Fred and I will be matched as a pair,” Skoken said, “and he stands a much better chance of getting a kidney this way. As soon as he gets a kidney, I will donate mine and it will happen all at once.”

Both the Skoken and Haskins families are members of the congregation at the Duke Center United Methodist Church, where Ronda Skoken first announced several weeks ago that she had been going through tests to see if she could be a kidney donor.

The preliminary tests were done in Bradford and the final tests were done at Buffalo General Hospital, where she was found to be completely well.

PAIR Partners will fly her anywhere, but she must buy her own ticket. She will be receiving a kit in the mail containing tubes to hold blood, which will be drawn at Bradford and sent to a recipient, where the blood will be mixed together to determine if it is compatible.

Skoken said “a person doesn’t have to be a close match anymore because they have so many new drugs to keep the body from rejecting a new organ.”

She also said Buffalo General is excited about the PAIR Partners, which is a national program.

When asked what inspired Skoken to become a donor, she said “I felt so sorry for the Haskins family. Something inside me seemed to be pushing me. It’s bigger than I am.”

Her husband, Dan, has supported her, and said if she couldn’t do it, he would.

The Skokens are the parents of three daughters. Ronda Skoken said she would be glad to talk to anybody interested in learning more about PAIR Partners.

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