David “Andy” Ballan meant to donate a kidney to save his father’s life.

But his father unexpectedly received a kidney from the death of an unknown stranger. Ballan never felt a sense of relief at being “off the hook.”

Instead, he chose to return the gift of life that his father received and to donate his own kidney to another stranger waiting for a transplant.

“I just did it because I thought it was what I needed to do to say ‘thank you’ for my Dad,” said Ballan, a 42-year-old ex-Marine who wears his red hair in a long pony tail.

In June, Ballan underwent laproscopic surgery at Porter Adventist Hospital in Denver to donate his kidney. The surgeons said the pink, healthy kidney started filtering blood before the transplant recipient’s incision was closed.

Ballan, who spent a night in the hospital in Denver, was back at work in mid-July at his night job as an inventory associate at the Heights Walmart.

He is the father of three teenage girls and has lived in Billings since 1981, when his father retired from the Air Force. After graduating from Billings West High in 1986, Ballan served four years in the Marine Corps.

His kidney surgery was covered by the transplant recipient’s insurance. A transplant association will help cover some of Ballan’s travel expenses, which included a two-week stay in a Denver hotel.

The transplant recipient, Simon Rodriguez, 65, is a retired pastor from Pueblo, Colo., a few years younger than Ballan’s father. Rodriguez and Ballan met accidentally during the pre-surgical testing procedures.

“He looked like he was kind of sick and tired of being sick and tired, like he was kind of in pain,” Ballan said.

After the surgery, when they were officially introduced, Rodriguez’s wife, Priscilla, called Ballan “Mr. Wonderful.”

“It was a neat experience to meet the Rodriguezes and see how grateful they were,” Ballan said.

“One thing you notice with people who go through dialysis, they get kind of a washed-out gray look,” he said. “His wife said it was so great to see color get back in him. He’d been on dialysis for five years.”

Some transplant candidates wait even longer for an organ match. The United Network for Organ Sharing lists more than 85,000 candidates waiting for a kidney transplant.

This year, for the first time in three or four years, his father was able to go to the family’s traditional summer gathering at Rainy Lake in northern Minnesota.

“He hadn’t been able to touch a golf club,” Ballan said.

On Father’s Day, Ballan’s father went out and hit a bucket of golf balls.

“Receiving a kidney has given him his life back,” Ballan said.

Since the surgery, Ballan’s girlfriend has become Facebook friends with the Rodriguezes and their three grown daughters.

During Rodriguez’s career as a pastor, he established a drug rehabilitation center, was a founder of three churches and became a district supervisor for a four-state region of the Assemblies of God fellowship. He later worked as a police dispatcher, taught at a Bible college and was a volunteer police chaplain.

When his kidneys failed, he went from being a vital, energetic organizer to being unable to work. It took all of his will to muster the strength to lead a Sunday afternoon Bible study, said his wife, who is also an ordained minister.

Rodriguez’s daughter, Yvonne Doria, said Ballan will always be in the family’s prayers. She puts the reason simply:

“He gave something he didn’t have to give.”