About Amy
Did You Know?
According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, 2021 was the eleventh consecutive record-breaking year, with more than 40,000 transplants being performed. The need for organ donors is immense. More than 6,500 candidates—an average of almost 18 per day—die while on the waitlist, or within 30 days of leaving the list for personal or medical reasons, without receiving an organ transplant.
- 1 organ donor can save up to 8 lives.
- Every 9 minutes another name is added to the national organ transplant waiting list.
People in Need of an Organ Transplant
Transplants in 2022
Data as of February 2023.
Updated stats can be found at UNOS.
More About Amy
Amy S. Peele was born and raised in the Chicago area. Having graduated from South Chicago School of Nursing (SCCH) in 1974, Amy discovered her passion for organ donation and transplantation when she started as a transplant coordinator at the University of Chicago in 1976. She enjoyed a 35-year career in Transplantation retiring from University of California San Francisco in 2014. As President of the North American Transplant Coordinators Organization (NATCO), she was a guest on the Phil Donahue talk show as well as national and local radio stations, discussing the National Organ Transplant Act, which was passed in 1984.
Amy has a love for comedy and improv and graduated from Second City Players Workshop in 1985 in Chicago. She has also studied Improv at BATS (Bay Area Theatre Sports) in San Francisco. Amy’s sense of humor comes through in all her writing.
Amy met her architect husband, Mark Schatz, through his mother who was her student at a transplant coordinator course. They were married in 1987 and have two children. Gracie is a butcher, fishmonger, and chef living in Eugene Oregon. Bennett works in the digital sound industry in San Francisco, enjoys building bikes, and playing music.
Amy now lives in Marin County where she has been writing creatively since 1988. With CUT, Amy infuses her passion for transplantation into her murder mysteries and brings a fresh, knowledgeable, and humorous new voice into the world of mystery novels.
Early Transplant Career at
University of Chicago 1977
I have been a nurse since 1974 and started my transplant career in 1977 at the University of Chicago. I was fortunate to learn all the aspects of organ donation and kidney transplantation while working with Dr. Frank Stuart and partnered with him on all the activities listed below:
- Evaluated patients to be listed for a kidney transplant
- Orchestrated all the events that culminated in kidney donation including speaking to donor families of a patient that had been declared brain dead
- Assisted in the recovery of the kidneys in the operating room
- Called patients when a kidney became available
- Worked up living kidney donors and presented them to the team
- Rounded twice a day with the transplant team
- Followed up the patients in the post-kidney transplant clinic
Talking to donor families who have just lost a loved one is the most intense and real interaction I have ever had in my life. Donor families are the most courageous and generous people in the world. What still saddens me to this day is the number of people who die waiting for hearts, livers, kidneys & lungs. While writing my transplant murder mysteries I am careful to recycle all the organs and tissues from each of the victims.
If there were a 12 step program for addiction to transplantation, organ donation and immunology, I would be a regular at the meetings. The most satisfying moments of my career were when I called patients to tell them we had a kidney for them. Imagine receiving a call like that after waiting years and years on dialysis, watching your body and mind deteriorate.
Amy was featured in the journal, Progress in Transplantation, Vol 23, No. 4, December 2013.
