Mandi Schwartz Marrow Drive going virtual this year

The annual Mandi Schwartz Marrow Drive has been a spring staple on Yale’s Cross Campus the past 11 years. But with students sent home in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, organizers were forced to switch things up this year.

The event has been declared a virtual drive, starting Sunday and running through Thursday.

All who register — you must be between the ages of 18 and 44 — will receive a kit in the mail. Donors will swab their own cheeks and return the kit to the Be the Match Foundation through the mail. Those who might be a match for patients in need will be contacted to donate marrow and possibly save a life.

To register go to: Join.bethematch.org/YaleSaves. Or text YaleSaves at 61474.

“Our isolation and distancing has changed the way we do things,” said Larry Ciotti, a retired Yale football coach who has headed up the drive since 2009. “There are no in-person drives going on in our country. Blood cancer patients need us more than ever. Many lives will be saved at a time in when many are dying. The Yale drive has saved 73 lives in the 11 years of the campus drives. Please be the person that makes a difference for a leukemia patient.”

Schwartz’s story has been one of the driving forces behind the success of the Yale drives. Diagnosed with leukemia in 2008, she battled the disease for nearly two years. In September 2010, with no matching adult donor found, she required a blood stem cell transplant — designed to give her a new immune system — using two anonymously donated units of umbilical cord blood.

A biopsy in December 2010 indicated that she had relapsed, and she passed away at home in Saskatchewan on Apr. 3, 2011. She was 23 years old.

Since instituting the drive, Yale has added 7,536 potential donors to the Be The Match Registry. At least 70 life-saving donor matches for patients in need have been located through the school’s efforts.