How Small Acts of Kindness Saved a Life And Changed a Family
- Nov 22, 2025
- 4 min read
“Sometimes just showing up is all you need to do.”
Memorial Day weekend 2020, Brady Karren’s life fell apart. He’d spent the day riding horses and target shooting with his daughters in the mountains near their Heber Valley home. That evening he grew weak and yellow. “He could hardly walk from one room to the other,” recalls his wife, Meranie. Doctors discovered Brady’s liver was failing. He needed emergency surgery, which the nearest hospital couldn’t perform.
So the Karrens drove from one facility to another before finally finding a surgical team an hour away in Salt Lake City. Because of COVID-19 restrictions, Meranie couldn’t stay by Brady’s side. Overcome with fear, she pleaded to see him once before leaving. A security guard named Keith escorted her upstairs.
As the elevator doors closed, Keith mentioned he was from Idaho. Meranie felt a shock run
through her body. “I knew without a shadow of a doubt - it was him,” she says. Her birth father.
That moment was the culmination of months of prayer, searching, and an act of service from a
stranger. Meranie had always known she was adopted as a baby. “Somebody gave me up to give me something better,” she says. Not long before Brady’s illness, Meranie had taken a DNA test and began searching for her birth parents. She was stymied - until an unfamiliar name appeared in her inbox.
“I see we’re distant cousins,” wrote Tammy Felt, a stranger with a love for family history. She
became obsessed with solving Meranie’s puzzle. “It was like someone was tapping me on the
shoulder,” says Felt. Within a week, she had two names for Meranie. Days later, in that hospital elevator, the pieces clicked into place. Keith Beebe, the security guard, was evasive. But the next day he invited Meranie to meet him in the hospital chapel, took her hands and admitted he was her father.
Soon, she was in touch with her two half-brothers - one of whom would later play a vital role in
saving Brady’s life.
Doctors stabilized Brady, but he needed a new liver. For two years, he waited on the transplant list, growing weaker by the day. Their small farm became impossible to manage.
Curt Clyde and his family, who live next door, offered to tend the Karrens’ fields. “It wasn’t a big sacrifice,” says Curt. “We saw a need and we were able to help.”
Members of their church congregation joined in. One man came over every day with a shovel,
helping install sprinklers though he’d never done it before. “Sometimes just showing up is all
you need to do,” Curt says. Those small, faithful acts of service kept the family afloat. “The feeling of gratitude, it’s amazing,” says Meranie.
By 2023, Brady’s condition had become dire and doctors recommended he find a living donor to give a portion of their liver. Brady was reluctant ask for something so big, so Meranie wrote the Facebook post. Kenn Kimber, a retired Army pilot and the husband of one of Meranie’s cousins, volunteered. “When you leave the military, you want purpose,” Kenn says. “I thought, why not? What do I have to lose?”
He endured months of testing and eventually went into surgery - but the doctors never used his liver. The lead surgeon later told him, “I’m not a religious person, but I had your liver in my hand and felt it wasn’t right.” Kenn was left with scars and ongoing complications but says he’d do it again “in a heartbeat.”
Next, Meranie’s newly found half-brother, Brock Beebe, stepped forward. “Do you really want to risk your health?” she asked. “Family looks out for family,” he replied. Brock spent six months losing weight and traveling to the hospital for tests. “Never once did I think it was a mistake,” he says. “Something had to happen for Brady, and I knew I could be that something.”
Before the procedure could take place, the Karrens received a call that changed everything.
While their bills mounted, a friend, Cynthia Blades, offered to organize a fundraising carnival
and auction, despite her own chronic illness. “I believe in prayer and fasting,” says Blades.
“There was a second and third set of invisible hands helping me.” A few days before the carnival, which would ultimately raise $15,000, Brady and Meranie went to church to pray. There, Brady says “the thought came like a lightning bolt: Be still and know that I am God.”
As they walked out, his phone rang. A liver was available - from a deceased donor. Doctors later said they suspected Brady would need a full liver to survive, rather than a partial donation from a living donor.
Brady becomes emotional thinking of the young man whose organ saved him. “To allow me to
raise my daughters and be with my family - that’s something you can never repay,” says Brady. “My goal is to live the best life I can with the gift they gave me.”
“We know there’s a mother and father who miss their son,” adds Meranie. “In the midst of their tragedy, they said yes so others could live. We love them. Thank you.”
Today, Brady is healthy again - riding horses, working the farm, and chasing his three daughters through the Heber Valley. The Karrens see their story as a web of divine mercy woven through countless acts of service: a stranger’s help with genealogy, neighbors tending fields, a soldier offering his own body, a brother’s willingness to give, and a friend moved by prayer to rally a community.
“It’s humbling,” says Brady. “But it shows you - I don’t care what your politics are or your
religion - people are good. People want to help people. That’s what it’s all about.”
This story celebrating #LightTheWorld first appeared on BYUradio’s Top of Mind with Julie
Rose. Additional credit: Amber Borowski Johnson.
