Donald Kramer, a New Salem farmer, retired and moved to Bismarck and then had some extra time on his hands.

And that's why he got a part-time job working for the Bismarck Civic Center taking tickets and guarding the door.

Or, at least he thought that's why he took the job. Now, he thinks something else.

"God was looking out for us and our son," said Kramer, 69, on Thursday.

Kramer was taking tickets at the Belle Mehus City Auditorium in September 2004 and met a fellow ticket-taker he had never been paired up with before - total stranger Susan Weigel, 47, of Bismarck. They started talking.

She asked about his family. His wife's name is Darlene and he told her he had four children.

Somewhere in the conversation, he mentioned that his oldest, Alan Kramer, in his 40s, needed a kidney. Weigel asked him what his son's blood type was and found out it was the same as hers.

She didn't know much about kidney transplants, but she'd think about it.

As of April 14, Alan Kramer, 46, of Wahpeton, has a new kidney.

"If I hadn't moved to Bismarck and gotten that job, he'd still be waiting for a kidney," Donald Kramer said.

Alan Kramer, a severe diabetic since age 11 who still needs a new pancreas, also thinks she's an angel.

"God sent me an angel," said Alan Kramer, whose new kidney is functioning well.

On her side, Weigel said she believes that helping him was something God directed her to do.

Weigel said that last year, she had a scare when she found a lump in a breast and it took three weeks before she found out it was benign. She had watched two relatives suffer and die from breast cancer, and was scared. But during the three weeks, she did a lot of praying and accepted whatever path God was taking her down, she said. And she decided if she were found to be cancer-free, she would help someone else, somehow.

Not that it would be the first time.

Her husband, Ken Weigel, said they will never be rich. She helps people she comes across, gives them her time, her cooking, and often helps financially.

"I've been in the food line with my children. I know what it's like," she said, referring to tough times in her life when she was a divorced single mother, prior to marrying Ken Weigel five years ago.

"God allowed me to go through the hardships I did so I could have compassion for people," she said.

When she lived in an old mining town in Michigan, there was an old hermit who lived in a shack without running water. She'd bring him her homemade bread, and at Thanksgiving time she invited him in. He smelled bad, talked oddly, but "he didn't have anyplace to go." There's also an orphan in Egypt she has been supporting for about eight years. And a relative here in Bismarck who is just getting back on his feet with her as his only support system.

So, Ken Weigel knows what his wife does. "I have a remarkable wife," he said.

But when she told him she was going to give a kidney to a stranger, he asked her if she was crazy.

"I told him I really felt God brought this opportunity into my life," she said.

The results from more than 2 1/2 days of testing in February showed she was a good match.

She had never met Alan Kramer, never talked to him. The Minnesota transplant center suggested that she could call him and tell him the news. She wanted to, and reached him on his cell phone right after his dialysis session in Fargo. He had just started the drive back to Wahpeton, which he did three times a week.

"I had to pull over," Alan Kramer said upon hearing the news. "It was kind of a heart-wrenching thing." He cried while talking to her and after.

She picked the soonest possible time for surgery, two weeks away, knowing he'd been on the transplant list for some time.

Alan Kramer said he moved to Wahpeton after high school for college and then started a career doing woodworking for a local company there.

Kramer is a single dad raising a 15-year-old daughter. In his off time, his hobbies include motorcycling, snowmobiling, hunting, gun shows, car shows and lots of target shooting. He remembers someone telling him he should have been a Marine sniper because he was such a good shot.

"He was very active, a hard worker, honest," said his dad, Donald Kramer.

But a few years ago, Alan Kramer's health problems became worse, when his kidneys started to go.

In December, he had to start the trips to Fargo for dialysis.

But then along came Weigel.

Weigel, who had lots of sick time saved up from her job at Dakota Fire Insurance, used it for this - for the operation at Fairview University Transplant Center in Minneapolis and for recuperation time.

For three hours after the operation, the pain was worse than childbirth, Weigel said.

"They couldn't get my pain under control," she said.

There was something wrong with her medication pump, but on top of that she was having blood pressure problems and they couldn't give her any more pain medication.

"I was sobbing," she said. But she couldn't really sob because it hurt too much to sob. That's was the only time she had moments of regret about going through the donation.

After Alan Kramer's operation, the Kramer family and Ken Weigel were told in the waiting room it was successful, the kidney was working fine.

"There were so many tears of joy … mainly his father, Don," said Ken Weigel, who also shed some.

Kramer's family asked him if he knew he was married to an angel. And Donald Kramer tried to give Ken Weigel a roll of green. The Weigels had had to scrounge to come up with hotel, food and gas money for the trip.

But Ken Weigel wouldn't take it.

So maybe there's an angel named Weigel - or maybe there are two.