BATON ROUGE - A Ouachita Parish Sheriff's deputy received an award Tuesday for donating one of his kidneys to a Mississippi high school football coach. 

Beyond the Badge gave out awards to recognize law enforcement officers who perform acts of kindness beyond what is required of them.

High school football coach, Herbert Davis, received a phone call in November from a Mississippi hospital that a stranger was going to donate their kidney to him.

"You know you had your doubts if you would ever get one but we just stayed with faith in the Lord and got the call," Davis said.

He had been waiting five years for a new kidney. He did dialysis five nights a week for four hours.

The hero was a stranger—Captain Patrick Johnson of the Ouachita Parish Sheriff's office.

"As I told him when he came to see me before I got out of the hospital, there are no words. You can never say enough to thank someone. It's an unbelievable thing to be able to do that for someone," Davis said.

Johnson said he chose to donate his organs after attending an FBI re-trainer class, where he learned of an NYPD detective who donated a kidney through a program that matched them with someone they didn't even know.

"I thought about it and it was just one of those things that never really left my mind. In fact, it kind of built up steam as time went on and so I prayed about it, and prayed about it, and researched it and I was just being led in that direction," Johnson said.

He selected the kidney donor program at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

The hospital was planning a chain of seven donation events in December, in which the program would select seven recipients who did not have familial or other matches identified to provide donations. Johnson was chosen to participate.

The surgery was performed on Dec. 11, 2023.

He was one of 14 officers from around the state who were recognized for their acts of kindness at the Beyond the Badge luncheon in Baton Rouge.

Johnson received the 2024 Heart of Law Enforcement Service Before Self award, which comes with a $500 gift card, and a Louisiana state flag that had been flown over the State Capitol for a day in his honor.