This weekend, Diego Polenta kicked off the Chevy Charity Challenge with the series' first competition. For every clearance Polenta made in the match, the LA Galaxy Foundation donated $200 to Gift of Life.

An Oscoda mother who battled a severe form of leukemia will meet and learn the identity of her life-saving blood stem cell transplant donor in Florida on Tuesday, July 30. The meeting will be streamed live at 6:30 p.m.

Jennifer Magi, a Florida State University engineering student, is a case in point. Practical, down-to-earth and focused, the 21-year-old was named FSU’s 2019 Undergraduate Humanitarian of the Year in April thanks in large part to her work with the Gift of Life (GOL) Marrow Registry, based in Boca Raton.

Roughly 2.5 years ago while on the Nativ College Gap Year Program, I found myself sitting in the basement of a Jerusalem hostel with the rest of my group. Just like most gap year programs and birthright groups in Israel, we had a representative from The Gift of Life Marrow Registry come to inform and educate us about the registry and most of all, empower us to swab and potentially save a life.

A simple swab of your cheek could help save a local boy. That is the message a Naples mom is desperate to get out. "It all started with him getting sick on a Saturday morning with the flu," Grae Salerno said. "By Sunday, we had to rush him to the ER." Grae’s son, Dalton, is fighting for his life after a sudden diagnosis of aplastic anemia in April. The condition is when the bone marrow stops working.

Mark DeFrancesco Jr., 26, never expected to see adulthood. When he was a child he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and at the age of 9, chemotherapy and radiation withered his body down to around 30 pounds. He was in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant, but despite testing drives throughout his home state of Connecticut and the support of his local community, no match had been found for DeFrancesco. Then "like a miracle," he told NJJN, a matching bone marrow donor, Samuel Aronoff of Highland Park, was found.