Kids & Family

2 Bone Marrow Donor Registration Drives for Jack Chin in SF on Saturday

Save Jack Today hopes friends and neighbors will spread the news to the north to help find a bone marrow match for Jack Chin.

If there was ever a time in ’s 23 years he wanted someone to drink to his good health it would be Saturday at McTeague’s Saloon in San Francisco where a bone marrow donor registration drive will be held in his honor.

Save Jack Today, the group of friends and family banding together to help find a bone marrow match for Chin who was diagnosed in July with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, has been furiously holding donor registration drives all across the Bay Area in hopes of finding the match that will save Chin’s life.

There are two in San Francisco on Saturday, March 10. The first will be from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Sunset Library located at 1305 18th Ave.; the second will be from 7 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. at McTeague’s Saloon located at 1237 Polk St. where there will be discounted drinks and a party in the back room.

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More than 300 people registered at two Cupertino based drives in February but it will take eight to 10 weeks to get the results of the cheek swab samples taken.

The response and support for the graduate has overwhelmed his twin brother, Jim, who has been leading the drive to find a donor match.

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“I’m pretty humbled,” Jim Chin said of the large turnouts.

Both of the February registration drives in Cupertino were arranged on short notice; in the case of the one held at Monta Vista High School, principal April Scott and others put together the drive in a matter of a couple days and registered more than 200 people. The drive held at the city’s Community Hall just days before the school event was attended by more than 100.

“We were not really expecting to get over one hundred people, that’s a really exceptionally high turnout,” said James de Lara, senior outreach coordinator for Asian American Donor Program. “I was surprised to see a lot of people who came out in support of Jack, most of whom were friends of him or his brother, or even classmates that he has not seen in years.”

No one in Chin’s family, including his twin brother, is a match for him. It’s an all too common challenge for those who need transplants. According to AADP about 70 percent of patients cannot find a biological family match.

To complicate matters the odds of finding a nonrelated match are about one in 100 to one in one million. And for Chin, who is Chinese, the odds increase dramatically because only about 25 percent of the national registry represent racial minorities.

Ruby Law, recruitment director of AADP, says that’s precisely why drives like these are so important; there are Asian patients across the country searching for a marrow match that will save their lives.

A registration drive is scheduled at the Cupertino Library for March 25, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.


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