Early Friday afternoon, Tom Hardy looked every bit the layabout par excellence.

It is absolutely accurate to say the 45-year-old father of two had rendered himself immobile while watching a DVD.

Sounds like the Los Angeles County firefighter was treating himself to some serious down time.

But, in fact, he was saving a stranger's life.

Hardy, of Camarillo, had been assigned to a back cubicle in an Orange County hospital where he was undergoing a newer, less invasive way of giving bone marrow.

For this so-called PBSC donation, he was hooked up to a machine that drew his blood out of one arm, filtered life-saving cells out of it and then circulated it back into his other arm.

To increase the number of blood-forming cells in his bloodstream, Hardy had undergone injections of the Amgen drug Neupogen for five days before the donation.

The shots left him feeling a little achy, he said.

Other than that he was ordered to drink two liters of water a day and eat salty foods. Yes, consume not shun salty foods.

Downing Doritos is the only part of this process that does not require sacrifice from the donors, who get paid nothing for their efforts.

We've all heard about paying it forward, or performing random acts of kindness because we someday will need someone to give us a break.

Hardy has paid it forward and backward.

He first signed up to be a bone-marrow donor in 1993 when he heard about the plight of a Montebello police officer's child.

Two years later, tragedy struck his own family. Hardy's wife's cousin suddenly lost his young son.

Tests show that Layne LaRue of Oxnard had died from a rare genetic defect that left his immune system helpless to fight a common virus.

Worse, two of his three brothers also had the disorder. Without bone-marrow transplants, Blayke and Garrett LaRue were not expected to make it until their 11th birthdays.

The plight of the LaRue family became a cause like few others I have witnessed in Ventura County. So many people were tested to see if they were potential donors for these boys it nearly bankrupted a local bone-marrow donor registry.

Hardy was not a match for either boy. In fact, a donor was never found.

The sons of Scott and Theresa LaRue were saved, however, by a transplant of stem cells taken from the donated umbilical cords of newborns.

Today, those boys are healthy and in their early teens.

Fast forward to six weeks ago when Hardy received a call out of the blue. There was a slight chance an unlikely 8 percent possibility that he was a match for a 57-year-old woman stricken with leukemia.

Further tests confirmed Hardy was a match.

Tom's wife, Lisa, was thrilled.

"She said, 'I wish it were me,'" he told me.

At 1:30 p.m. on Friday the 13th, Hardy joked, he was wishing the same thing.

The blood draw was not painful, he said, but uncomfortable. Psychologically, he said, it's tough to stay so still.

"Your blood is a perfect color," observed a nurse examining the plastic bag that was ever so slowly filling up.

By this point, Hardy had been hooked up to the machine at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange for four hours and had about that long to go.

As the time wore on, he felt pressure from the constant pumping.

As the drug he received to ease his discomfort kicked in, his mind wandered. He was looking forward to a cold beer and a swim in the motel pool when this was all over.

And he was thinking about others, too. He's been on the list for 14 years and what if he had moved? Maybe, the marrow donation program staff would not have reached him. He encouraged those who are already registered to contact the National Marrow Donor Program and get their addresses changed.

As I left, Hardy's only plan was to finish watching "Saving Private Ryan," the movie about a band of war-weary soldiers trying to rescue a man who was a stranger to them.

Hardy had little patience for the compliments he was receiving from the hospital staff for his act of generosity.

But it is truly amazing how much one person can do while appearing to do absolutely nothing.

E-mail this Star columnist at ccason@VenturaCountyStar.com. Phone her at 437-0261.