In an effort to help a pair of individuals in need who have connections to Florida State University, the Gift of Life at FSU hosted a donor drive Nov. 18, on Landis Green. With a quick cheek swab, participants joined a public registry and find out if they are a match for patients in need of a life-saving bone marrow transplant. Two members of the FSU family are in search of a match.

It takes five minutes to save a life. For those in need of a bone marrow transplant, those five minutes can mean life or death. On Thursday, The Gift of Life hosted a registration drive at Florida State University to find new bone marrow and stem cell donor matches. It’s an effort to find matches for two of the university’s own community members.

At a campus-wide event in August, Iota Nu Chapter President Casey Sheehan (Florida Atlantic University, 2022) met a representative from Gift of Life, an organization whose mission is to cure blood cancer through cellular therapy.

About five years ago, UGBC President Jack Bracher joined the registry to become a potential stem cell donor. A few years later, Bracher found out that he had a match. "I got a call from the nonprofit that I’d done it through saying that I was a match for a patient with leukemia, so I had started going through the process of being able to donate to him," Bracher, MCAS ’22, said.

Lynn University's Womens Lacrosse team joins Gift of Life Marrow Registry to fight blood cancer and help save lives.

After a life-saving decision, the Miami Beach Police Department organized a heartwarming reunion. The police department teamed up with the organization Gift of Life to reunite David Marder with Amir, the teenager he helped save from an inherited immune system disorder. Marder made the donation through the Gift of Life Marrow Registry, a non-profit that facilitates transplants for children and adults suffering from life-threatening illnesses.