After registering with Be The Match, DePaul tennis players
Yuliya Kizelbasheva (CDM ’23) and
Luuk Wassenaar (BUS ’21, CDM MS ’23) found out that they were matches and donated their blood stem cells to people with life-threatening diseases in 2022.
Andrew Richardson, a junior studying marketing in DePaul’s Driehaus College of Business, joined the Be The Match registry,
in hopes of helping his girlfriend, Olivia Gardner, a DePaul junior who needs a bone marrow transplant to cure her aplastic anemia, as her bone marrow is unable to produce enough new blood cells for her body.
Richardson didn’t match with Gardner, but he matched with another patient waiting for a transplant, so he donated his blood stem cells in February 2023. Gardner, however, is still waiting for a donor.
Paying It Forward
Gardner’s and Richardson’s stories moved DePaul College of Education alumna
Sandi Gaskin (COE ’75). Gaskin was diagnosed with leukemia in 2015 and shortly afterward received a transplant through Be The Match. She’s thankful for her donor, a man living in Germany with whom she still keeps in touch, and for the transplant that has enabled her to see her grandchildren thrive.
“Three out of my four grandchildren were born after I received my transplant,” Gaskin says. “I am so grateful for Be The Match because I can be here for them. It’s such a wonderful feeling being able to see them grow up.”
Gaskin wanted to give others the same opportunity that she had. As an active alumna and a former member of the Dean’s Advisory Council for the College of Education (COE), Gaskin reached out to the college, hoping there was the possibility for it to sponsor a drive for students to join the registry. The answer was a resounding yes.
In May 2023, more than a dozen volunteers, including DePaul nursing students, set up a tent on the DePaul Quad for the COE drive and doled out cheek swabs to students eager to join the registry. Gaskin, Richardson and Gardner were all at the event, where they shared their stories and encouraged students to register. More than 50 students, employees and community members joined the registry during the drive.
Many lifesaving matches have been found at drives supported by DePaul students, says Terri Haid, Illinois account manager at Be the Match.
“DePaul University is the heart and soul of Be The Match recruitment in the Chicago area,” Haid says. “They make an immeasurable impact on our work.”
Gaskin is happy to continue supporting the cycle of donors and recipients. “I am just so grateful that someone was there for me,” she says, “and that one of these students can have the opportunity to be there for someone else.”
Individuals ages 18–40 can request a kit to be mailed to their home by visiting bethematch.org/ForOlivia. Filling out a form and swabbing each cheek is all that is required to join the registry, where potential donors’ human leukocyte antigens are compared with those of thousands of waiting patients, including Gardner’s. Potential donors are only called for further testing if identified as a match for a patient in need of a transplant.