Cancer Survivor Gets to Thank Silent Hero

In a poignant symbol of change in one community, a Torrance resident was praised Saturday for having the backbone to save a Honolulu man’s life.

“I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time,” Sean Soo explained before placing an orchid lei around the neck of Dennis Tan. “I thought my situation was hopeless. Without him I wouldn’t be alive today.”

Soo, 33, beat back leukemia after receiving a bone marrow transplant donated last year by Tan, 24. Until Saturday, the identities of the donor and recipient had been kept secret.

But Soo and Tan were eager to meet. And the nonprofit Asians for Miracle Marrow Matches was only too glad to oblige, particularly because the group had scheduled a fifth-anniversary luncheon Saturday in Montebello for volunteers who recruit Asian donors.

Although bone marrow transplants are often successful, this meeting represented a leap forward for the Los Angeles-based group. Ethnicity is a factor in such matches -- and only about 5% of the 2.4 million Americans registered as potential bone marrow donors are of Asian descent.

That’s because “religious and traditional barriers” often tied to strong parental influence have steered many Asian young people away from donating bone marrow, explained Madhuri Mistry, a Cerritos resident and a leader of Miracle Marrow Matches.

So far, Mistry said, 31,000 Southern Californians with Asian ancestry have registered as potential donors. Twenty have participated in the hourlong procedure that extracts about a pint of marrow from the back of the pelvic bone.

Donors are not told who gets their marrow and generally are never told whether the transplant was a success. That’s fine with many of them.

“I want it that way. I don’t think I could deal with it if I knew that things went bad,” said marrow donor Edward Tani, 37, a mechanical engineer from Clovis.

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But Tan--who was motivated by the memory of a childhood friend who died of leukemia at age 15--was curious about the outcome of his marrow donation.

He wrote a note signed simply “Dennis” wishing his recipient well and had transplant officials forward it anonymously to Soo. Soo’s family responded with a letter of thanks, but their last name was blanked out by transplant officials.

“I’ll definitely be staying in touch with Sean from now on,” said Tan, who is a graduate student in public health at UCLA.

Soo, a food analyst who, like Tan, is of Chinese descent, said he will treat Tan “like my brother” for the rest of his life.

“What he’s done was so honorable,” Soo said. “I’ll never forget the gift of life he’s given me. I thought my situation was hopeless. Today, I’m totally off medication.”

The crowd of 160 at the luncheon was urged not to ease up in the search for donors.

“These are true heroes in our society, people who have saved lives,” said Bill Watanabe, executive director of the Little Tokyo Service Center.

The volunteer recruiters said Saturday’s meeting will make them work harder.

“It’s frustrating when people don’t want to sign up,” said Mary Mallauarapu, a UCLA student from Westwood.

“But seeing something like this makes you realize how important it is to do.”