About Our Donors

Colleen and Stan Schafer

Colleen Schafer knows firsthand that the most important thing for a patient with kidney failure is getting to dialysis. When winter storms hit in 2006, she and her husband, Stan, a dialysis patient at Totem Lake Kidney Center, found themselves stranded by icy roads in their Bothell hilltop neighborhood.

Family members rallied to get Stan from home to his dialysis treatments. After Stan passed away in January 2008, Colleen felt compelled to act on his idea to help other Northwest Kidney Centers patients with transportation, so she established the Stanley A. Schafer Memorial Fund.

"Stan was a wonderful husband," said Colleen. "I’m so pleased to remember him in this way and help other patients at the same time. Before Stan started dialysis I didn’t realize how many people had renal problems and were on dialysis. I hope others are inspired by this gift to help too."


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Northwest Kidney Centers keeps people in the Seattle area alive with dialysis care, educates the public about kidney health, and collaborates with UW Medicine in the Kidney Research Institute. We are one of very few community-based, nonprofit dialysis providers in the country. Founded in 1962, ours was the first out-of-hospital dialysis program in the world and it is still a model in the field.