The e-mail that Nancy Gleason received last September was lengthy: a last-ditch plea from a distant relative, writing to ask if she knew anyone who might be willing to donate a kidney to a stranger.
Gleason clicked the "forward" button and typed in her husband's e-mail address. Her e-mail was just one line long: "We're both O-positive. I'm in if you are."
Eight months later, Chief Joe Gleason of the West Goshen Police Department was heading into surgery at the Mayo Clinic, about to give a major organ to a woman he had met two days before.
Gleason, 55, who has led the West Goshen department since 2011, gives new meaning to the term unassuming. Ask him to talk about himself and he'll smile and say he just doesn't like to. Married to Nancy for 30 years, a father of three, he worked his way up from traffic cop to chief of police over a 31-year career.
