PHOENIX -- One Arizona Motor Vehicle Division employee gave a co-worker the gift of life for the holiday season. She donated her kidney.

Penny Lewis and Chela Lopez didn't really know each other, but when Lewis heard Lopez needed a kidney, she offered her own.

"When she found out people were testing for me, she came up and she says, 'Chela … I'm (on the) donor list," Lopez said.

According to Lewis, who is known for helping stray cats and donating blood and bone marrow, she had been looking for someone to give a kidney to.

"I said, 'I'll donate. I'll test,'" Lewis said. "She said, 'Are you serious?'

"And I said, 'Yeah -- why not?'"

Lewis was tested, and she was a match for Lopez, whose kidneys failed several years ago after a series of complications resulting from her diabetes.

When she first learned she needed a new kidney, Lopez said, she wanted to give up, but she realized she had much more to live for -- two grandchildren.

"(The new kidney) will make her life easier," Lewis said. "I know she's always tired and can't do a lot with (her grandchildren)."

Lews, who joked that the two would be sisters once they had surgery, said it was "not a stretch" to give someone her kidney.

"I only need one," she said, adding that the 20 years of life the donation would give Lopez would allow the other woman to "hopefully finish up what she needs."

Lopez called Lewis her "angel."

"There's not enough words … I can say to Penny to thank her," Lopez said. "She gave me back my life."

The surgery is scheduled for Dec. 9 at Cedar's Sinai Hospital in California.