From the time she was a teenager, Haneefah Harris had her life planned.

She wanted to marry, buy a home and have a child by the time she was 26. There was nothing all that magical about her deadline except that 26 is the age at which her parents had her.

RENEE' HANNANS HENRY/Staff (ENLARGE)

Haneefah Harris came to Stanley's rescue in more than one way.

Theirs is a long, happy union, 40 years and counting, and Haneefah hoped for the same thing.

And so the moment she graduated from Long Island University in Southampton, N.Y., she began working her plan, moving in 1992 to Atlanta, where in her mind, one way or the other, dreams came true.

She quickly landed jobs with the Gwinnett County Children's Shelter and the DeKalb Housing Authority and began saving for a home. Then, while watching a gospel television show late that year, she heard about the need for people willing to adopt or become foster parents.

Without even knowing it, Haneefah had another mission. She wanted to save children now, too.

She signed on to become a foster mother. The following year, at age 23, she bought her first home.

She still hadn't gotten married or given birth, but over the next 14 years, Haneefah took in as many as 100 foster children for months at a time.

She loved her life, loved taking care of children even if it was just temporary. She could see in their faces that she was making a difference. One day, the Department of Family and Children Services called to see if she could take a newborn girl.

Haneefah went the very next day. She eventually adopted the little girl.

"She'd gotten into my heart in such a way, I couldn't let her go," Haneefah said. She named her Naimah, which means blessing.

It was the same in 2001 with the little boy who was born so sick that doctors said he wouldn't live.

He was 3 months old when Haneefah got the call to pick him up at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston.

Nurses there ushered her into the room, where he lay hooked to what seemed like a million tubes. One to track his blood pressure, one to monitor his heart rate, one to feed him.

The baby had been born with post-urethral damage. He was on 14 medications. He'd eventually need a kidney transplant.

"When I saw him, it was a done deal," Haneefah recalled.

He had a hole below his navel for urinating, and he needed two injections a day. Haneefah just knew she'd have to take him home, that no one would fight for this little boy like she would. She was convinced of that. So was his doctor, Barry Warshaw, medical director of the hospital's kidney transplant program.

"She was so willing to give of herself to make sure that Stanley got what he needed," he said in an e-mail.

Things went well that first week, and then the repeated hospital visits began. The baby suffered seizures, high fevers, yeast infections. Even a cold meant a weeklong hospital stay.

Meanwhile, Stanley Harris, the man Haneefah had been dating, asked her to marry him. It was 2002 and she was 32, six years past her goal.

The next year, Harris adopted Haneefah's two children, even giving his name to the little boy, Stanley Harris Jr. They bought a new house and moved to Decatur.

Haneefah thought of her parents' long marriage and of a saying her mother had, that if "you feed them long enough, [children] start to look like you." Stanley Jr. is the spitting image of Haneefah.

Apparently in more ways than one.

Last year, when doctors told her they couldn't wait any longer for little Stanley's kidney transplant, they started looking for a donor.

Haneefah, the tests showed, was a near-perfect match. Not an impossibility, but a long shot. In October, doctors performed the transplant.

Today, Stanley is 4 and Haneefah is 36, happily married with two children, and two homes — the one she bought on her own and the one she bought with her husband.

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