MATCH GAME: Staff sergeant’s disease sparks push for minority donors

AURORA | Upon hearing he had a particularly rare form of leukemia, Staff Sgt. Mark Jenkins relied on his steadfast resolve to beat the disease in himself — and others.

“It’s a day-to-day struggle, I feel sick all the time. But I’m still coming to work, still doing the family activities, trying not to get down,” he said. “But the bottom line is, you only have one life to live and you may as well go as hard as you can all the time.”

John Dingeses fills out paperwork to be a potential bone marrow donor Monday afternoon, June 4 at the Aurora Public LIbrary. Bonfils is holding drives across Denver and Aurora in an effort to spur more bone marrow donors for the national registry. Currently about 10 million donors are listed on the registry nationwide. (Marla R. Keown/Aurora Sentinel)

Soledad Hernandez, a recruitment specialist for Bonfils Colorado Marrow Donor Program, hands out a mouth swap to a potential donor Monday afternoon, June 4 at the Aurora Public Library. Bonfils is holding drives across Denver and Aurora in an effort to spur more bone marrow donors for the national registry. Currently about 10 million donors are listed on the registry nationwide. (Marla R. Keown/Aurora Sentinel)

Kim Hunt stops by the bone marrow donation station Monday afternoon, June 4 at the Aurora Public Library. Bonfils is holding drives across Denver and Aurora in an effort to spur more bone marrow donors for the national registry. Currently about 10 million donors are listed on the registry nationwide. (Marla R. Keown/Aurora Sentinel)

That attitude led Jenkins and his wife Darlene Jenkins, along with members of the Colorado Army National Guard, Bonfils Blood Center and his doctors, to press the metro area for more bone marrow donors — particularly minority donors. More donors could not only save more lives nationwide, but also the life of Mark Jenkins.

“In September I learned that I would be a good candidate for a bone marrow transplant, but there are no matching donors for me right now,” Jenkins said.

Jenkins, who is black, said finding donors for minorities is particularly difficult because of misinformation, or lack of education among those populations.

“They think the process hurts, or that they’re put on a list somewhere and watched,” he said. “They don’t know that just swabbing someone’s cheek can save a life.”

Soledad Hernandez, a recruitment specialist with Bonfils Colorado Marrow Donor Program, said that minorities are underrepresented on donor lists.

There are roughly 10 million bone marrow donors nationwide, she said. Fewer than 700,000 are black.

That means for patients like Mark Jenkins the search for a potential donor is long and exhaustive.

So far, in his name, Bonfils and others have collected more than 1,500 potential donors from Denver metro-area drives that started in March.

Considering that only 1 in 540 collected samples actually end up donating marrow, and minority donors are even harder to find, Jenkins knows that his search isn’t over yet.

Aurora resident Burt Hudson signed up to donate at a marrow drive at the Aurora Central Library on June 4 and said that he was inspired by a friend to help.

Hudson, who is black, said a friend donated a kidney spurring him to commit to helping strangers, however he could.

“I was doing something else and I saw the (Bonfils) van outside. I heard a story too about a guy who needed help because there wasn’t enough donors,” Hudson said. “One of these days, if I can do something for somebody else, I will.”

Bonfils Blood Center Marrow Donor Screening

11:30 a.m. – 3 p.m.

June 9

Max Muscle Sports Nutrition Smoky Hill

20209 E. Smoky Hill Road

720-870-0586