ELWOOD — Angie Collins has become a teacher’s pet, though it may have taken 22 years and a kidney.

Collins, 40, donated her kidney this week to her former Elwood Community High School English teacher Darren Paquin.

“I can’t help but think that our paths crossed a long time ago as a student and teacher; I think God knew all along that this was the plan,” said Paquin sitting in her room at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis.

“He works in mysterious ways, doesn’t he?”

Her surgery was Tuesday. She’ll head home on Sunday for Mother’s Day.

Collins, the mother of three, is to go home this week but was recuperating Thursday from her surgery.

“I thought and prayed for about two months,” Collins said. “I wanted to make the decision to donate first, before I ever found out if I would be a match.

“Then, when I made the decision to donate, I knew I was a match. I knew it in my heart.”

Her husband, Dean, explained that his wife felt compelled to offer a kidney after she first heard about the need.

“She knew she wanted to do it and she knew she was supposed to,” he said.

Before surgery, Paquin was among 814 people in Indiana — and 76,629 nationally — awaiting a kidney transplant.

Nationally and in Indiana, those awaiting kidneys form the largest group of patients needing transplants, said the Indiana Organ Procurement Organization.

Through Web sites and public awareness, patients don’t always have to rely on family members to serve as donors, though there is typically an 18- to 24-month wait.

“With the new easier procedures, we have a lot more nonrelated living donors, just friends or a church member who hears about the need,” said Dr. Charles Carter Jr., her specialist in nephrology and internal medicine.

In high school, Collins — then Angie Melvin — was Paquin’s student in speech and composition.