A 4-year-old needed a liver transplant. A stranger stepped in to help.

After years of medical struggles and uncertainty, 4-year-old Ailani Troncoso is finally enjoying her childhood, thanks to a special gift from a complete stranger. Today, Ailani is bursting with energy, but her parents, Amanda and Miguel, remember a very different little girl. "She was just like a shell of herself. And she just wasn't living," mom Amanda said. Ailani was born with Alagille syndrome, a rare and catastrophic genetic disorder that was slowly destroying her liver. "Over time, her jaundice got worse … she had a hard time gaining weight. She was put on a feeding tube. The most discomforting for her the entire time was the itching," Amanda recalled. The disorder caused bile to build up in her liver, causing relentless itching with little relief. She was too weak to play, too miserable to rest. Doctors at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego had a sobering message for the Troncoso family: Ailani needed a liver transplant. Without one, she was running out of time. "There was nothing that you could do to help her. It was very emotional. It was very hard," Amanda said. Then came a ray of hope – doctors had found a living donor for Ailani. "We were doing all of the necessities to be on the donor list, and we were just going in for a regular checkup … I just remembered going silent … starting to cry," Amanda said. Donor Anh Nguyen, 52, was no stranger to extraordinary generosity. In 2019, Nguyen's friend Penny Pride needed a kidney transplant. …