On a Saturday last September, Be the Match Foundation sponsored a 5-kilometer walk and run in Creve Coeur Park to promote donor awareness. The foundation is an international bone marrow registry, and it coordinates marrow and stem cell transplants that are used to treat blood disorders.

Mark Pearl was at the event. Two of his three kids were born with a rare blood disorder called Fanconi anemia. Alexandra was diagnosed on Christmas Day 2000. She was 5. Her younger brother, Matthew, was diagnosed shortly thereafter. A marrow donor in Sweden was quickly found for Alexandra, but no matches were found for Matthew.

Mark and his wife, Diane, began organizing donor drives. Its easy to register as a donor. A couple of swabs on the inside of a cheek to collect DNA is all that is required. At their first drive in February 2001, they registered more than 4,000 potential donors. No matches. Over the next five and a half years, they organized more than 1,000 drives and registered more than 100,000 potential donors.

A donor was eventually found in North Carolina. As is almost always the case, the donor registered at someone elses drive. Matthew received his transplant in 2006.

He and his sister are fine.

Also at the event in Creve Coeur was Brian Jakubeck. He did not know Mark, but he had registered as a potential donor at one of the drives the Pearls had organized for Matthew. One of the last drives, actually.

How did that happen? Mark has season tickets for the Rams and sits next to Ted Cassimatis, who is a college friend of Brians brother. So as the Pearls reached out well beyond their own circle of friends, Ted sent out a mass email to his friends, and that email reached Brian. He and his wife, Kathy, registered as potential donors at a drive in May 2006.

Sometime later, Brian heard the good news from Ted that a donor had been found for his friends son.

Several years passed. In August 2012, Brian heard from Be the Match. He appeared to be a match. Would he agree to have some blood samples taken to confirm that he was a match? Sure, he said.

The results were positive. He was a match. He had more tests shortly before Christmas, and in January of last year, he went to St. Louis University Hospital and gave his stem cells. This was done in a process called apheresis. It is similar to giving plasma or platelets. The blood goes through an IV, passes through a machine that collects the stem cells, and then is returned through another IV. Its painless, but takes about six hours.

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