IPR Julie Knight (left) and Julie Freese (right) have been friends since their days as students at the University of Iowa. In December 2018, Freese donated one of her kidneys to Knight. Julie Knight met Julie Freese in a candy store in downtown Iowa City in the early 1980s. Knight had been battling Type 1 diabetes since she was ten years old and says she felt like one of the misfit toys from "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." After moving into a house together on Ash Street the two Julies, of course, became even closer. But their relationship only grew stronger after parting ways in Iowa City.