Boardman Township Administrator Jason Loree, left, and his new “cousin,” Jennifer Blomstrom, talk about the upcoming surgery that will transplant one of her three kidneys to Loree. Staff photo / Dan Pompili

BOARDMAN — As Jason Loree prepares to end his career as Boardman Township administrator, he is also preparing for a new beginning.

After years of declining kidney function and an increasingly urgent search for a donor in recent months, Loree is scheduled for a transplant June 30.

While most kidney recipients’ donated organs come from cadavers, Loree’s story came to a much happier resolution, when a family friend responded to his off-the-cuff Facebook post.

“He had posted on Facebook: ‘if anybody has an extra kidney laying around, let me know.’ And I put the little emoji where you raise your hand, and said ‘Well, I do. Let’s do this,'” said Jennifer Blomstrom, of Boardman.

Blomstrom said she’s known that she would donate one of her kidneys since about 2004, when treatment for kidney stones revealed that she had two kidneys on her right side. She’ll be giving Loree the lone kidney on her left.

Loree notified Boardman Township Trustees in October that he would be taking family medical leave time to manage his polycystic kidney disease, a genetic disorder that runs rampant in his family.

In early February, he notified trustees it was time to begin planning for his departure from the role he’s held for 20 years.

At their April 6 meeting, trustees announced former Girard Safety Service Director Mark Ragozine as Loree’s successor.

He said the realization struck him during Thursday’s special meeting of township trustees that, after two decades with the township, he was likely attending his final session before departing. He’ll officially step down on June 16, his late mother’s birthday.

A HARD ROAD

The kidney disease has taken over Loree’s life over the past few years, and more and more in recent months. His kidney function on both sides is down to 18%, he said.

Polycystic kidney disease causes multiple cysts to form in the kidneys that continually grow, causing swelling in the kidneys and eventual organ failure. In early 2025, Loree had to have heart surgery at the Cleveland Clinic, for an aortic root aneurysm. Loree said those with polycystic kidneys are five times more likely to develop aneurysms.

In the past six months or so, he said the disease has slowed him down, both physically and mentally. He has had to adjust his hours so he can work later in the day when he seems to have more energy — many days, getting up is a challenge.

The disease also steals time from his family, or makes spending it more costly. His daughter, Emmy, 7, just started with her Girl Scouts troop.

“I did her nature hike, her first nature hike with her in Poland Woods, and I’m like, ‘this is great, I can’t believe I get to do this.’ But, after that, the whole day I was done,” he said. “Like, I physically was completely wiped out. I slept for, like, four or five hours.”

Loree said he should be on dialysis already, but with the prospect of a transplant in front of him, he avoided the extra challenges and discomforts that come with the treatment.

But that decision also comes with risks, as he explained in February:

“I can’t filter medication well, so if I get sick for some reason, the medication they have to administer, they might not be able to pull out,” he said. “And if I’m not healthy enough to get dialysis to pull it out, I die.”

That very thing happened to his mother in September 2021, when she became ill with COVID-19. The toxins from the medicine the hospital administered for the virus built up in her system and her inability to process them ultimately killed her.

Loree learned he had the disease 18 years ago when he volunteered to donate a kidney to his mother. His brother has the disease along with six other immediate family members and many others in his extended family. The disease is the reason the Lorees did not have biological children, and why they adopted Emmy. Loree said he could not risk passing it on.

At least two uncles have had transplants and gone on to live much healthier lives. But Loree said he knows the transplant is not the end of the road. It comes with responsibilities like taking anti-rejection medication for the rest of his life.

“It suppresses your immune system, so you do become immunocompromised. You still have to be careful,” he said. “You take care of yourself. You take your anti-rejection meds. You follow the doctors to the T, what they want you to do. There’s a lot of blood work involved.”

But there’s no question that a successful surgery means a much better outlook, whatever the trade-offs.

“When you get this kidney, you’re in it for the long haul. Take care of yourself. Take care of your family. So, it’s a gift. You treat it right, and it will treat you right,” he said. “You’re not tethered to a machine. You’re not completely restricted on what you can, you know, where you can travel, what you can do.”

He said being honest with his daughter about his illness and the transplant has helped her process it. Emmy also is beginning to understand what the transplant means after seeing other news coverage about the surgery. She was amazed that Blomstrom had three kidneys and that her dad was getting one of them.

“I’m sure it’s a lot of emotions for a seven-year-old,” he said. “She’s taking all of this so well.”

IT TOOK A VILLAGE

While Loree is no child, it took a village to bring him to this point, and he finds himself amazed by his gratitude — not only for Blomstrom’s generosity, but also for the confluence of circumstances that seemed to defy all odds and logic.

“I ran to St. Charles [Catholic Church] the day I found out that we were good. And I lit a candle, said a prayer,” he said. “I have a cousin who’s a priest. I tried to reach out to him — he’s in Florida — just to say, ‘Hey man, I don’t know what I did, but let me know what more I can do.'”

The whole world around Loree seemed to conspire over countless years to bring him to this point.

Loree and Blomstrom met through mutual friend Michelle Wolford, who now lives in Texas but started as a secretary at the Boardman Police Department and later moved to the zoning office.

She also graduated high school with Blomstrom’s husband and Loree’s wife. The Lorees attended Blomstrom’s wedding and she attended many social gatherings at their home.

“Michelle is the linchpin,” Blomstrom said. “Through her, we talked. You know, I went to his house a couple times. Especially when they got Emmy, and I got to hold her.”

It gets a little more strange than that, though.

“It’s all interconnected,” Blomstrom said.

The network of support around them is comforting, they said. Blomstrom’s husband, Shawn, has been on board with it since she first told him, immediately after the Facebook exchange with Loree.

When she explained the situation to her husband, he didn’t hesitate.

“He just said ‘Do it. I’m all in,'” she said. He’s taken her to all her appointments and will be responsible for picking up the slack with their pets while she spends four to six weeks recovering.

She said her friends have set up a GoFundMe account to help her cover living costs while she is on leave from her job as a dental hygienist at a small local practice. She’ll most likely begin her leave on June 12, just a few days before her pre-op appointment at the Cleveland Clinic.

After months of testing and correspondence with each other and Clinic professionals before they finally got the green light, both Loree and Blomstrom are focused on minimizing their exposure to anything that could possibly derail the surgery.

“I just want to be healthy and happy and get to the 30th,” she said.

Loree said he wants to make sure Blomstrom is well cared for, and will be doing everything he can while he recovers to make sure she has what she needs.

It only comes naturally to him, for someone who’s at least as close as any blood relative.

“It seems like ‘thank you’ is not enough,” he said. “Essentially, I’m getting like a cousin now. We are a family.”