'Like we already knew each other': Man receives lungs, forms bond with family of slain Americus officer

In a small family cemetery just outside Americus, Georgia, there's a single grave and a single headstone. 

It belongs to Jody Smith.

"He had the prettiest blue eyes. They'd just melt your heart," says Smith's mother, Sharon Johnson. "We kept hoping for a miracle that somehow, someway, Jody would survive."

Body camera footage from December 2016 shows when Americus Police dispatched officer Nicholas Smarr to a domestic dispute at a home on South Lee Street. His best friend, Jody Smith, who worked with Georgia Southwestern State campus police, came as backup. 

The man seen running from the officers in the body camera video is Minquell Lembrick. He eventually turned around, fired two shots, and killed both men.

"I just screamed, 'Not Jody! Not my Jody,'" says Johnson. 

Johnson is a Sumter County Sheriff's Deputy. She was dispatched to the officer shooting scene on Dec. 7, 2016. She had no idea her own son was one of the officers down.

Eventually, Jody Smith was airlifted to the Medical Center, Navicent Health in Macon.

"I was given Jody's wallet in the hospital. I never opened it up. I just held onto it because I had hoped to be able to hand it back to him," says Johnson.  "Whenever we were told that Jody had no life, that's when I opened his wallet, pulled out his driver's license, and I saw he was an organ donor." 

As Jody laid lifeless in a Macon hospital bed, another man three states away was quickly approaching the same fate.

A lifelong welder from Indiana, Dee Buck's lungs were damaged from years of inhaling smoke and dust.

"I was going downhill pretty fast. I was down right to the last few hours," says Buck. 

Then, Dee and his daughter, Helen Buck-Leach, got the call.

"They said, 'I think we found you a pair of lungs,'" says Buck, 

Jody's family knew that even in death, he could save lives, so Dee received a new set of lungs, and a letter.

"It said, 'I am the mother of donor Jody, whose organs were used to save several lives," says Buck-Leach.

The letter came from Americus, Georgia, from Sharon Johnson.

"We prayed and hoped for our miracle, but we didn't get it, but others did, and I am so thankful for that," says Johnson. "This was a way for Jody to continue to help others."

Pretty soon, the families connected on Facebook, then in person at Jody's grave site this past October. 

"It was kind of like we all already knew each other a bit. They didn't feel like strangers," says Buck-Leach. 

"We felt such a bond with them," says Johnson. 

It is a bond that will never be broken, because a piece of Jody will be with Dee forever. 

"Jody's sister is a nurse, so she brought her stethoscope, and we all got to listen to his lungs," says Buck. 

"He breathes, Dee breathes, because of Jody, because of Jody's lungs," says Johnson. 

"He's still helping me every day. I think about him every day," says Buck. 

And back in that small, family cemetery, Jody may be buried, but his soul and his spirit live on.

"I am just so grateful he got that second chance," says Johnson. 

Jody's mother says people also received her son's kidneys, heart, and heart valves, which doctors told her saved almost a dozen people.

To register to be an organ donor, click here. You can register online or at your local motor vehicle department (DMV).

To hear how Americus Police Officer Nick Smarr also played a role in saving Dee Buck's life, listen to the video below.