VENTURA : Fund-Raiser to Aid Leukemia Victims

Selling used furniture or homemade cookies to raise money for school trips and sports uniforms is common. But Ventura County residents are organizing a garage and bake sale Saturday in Ventura for a more serious cause: to save lives.

Friends and family of 26-year-old Regina Carter of Ventura, who has leukemia, will hold the fund-raiser in the Buena High School parking lot from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Money raised will go toward bone-marrow testing programs in the county.

But the main purpose of the event will be to register people in the National Marrow Donor Program, a nationwide listing of people willing to donate bone marrow to victims of leukemia and other life-threatening illnesses.

So, while Carter’s mother, sister and friends hawk cookies and used toys Saturday, medical workers in mobile laboratories will be on hand to take blood samples from people interested in registering as bone-marrow donors.

Getting a bone-marrow transplant may be the only hope for Carter, her doctor said.

The single mother of a 5-year-old boy, Justin, Carter worked as a county corrections officer before she was diagnosed late last year with a rare form of leukemia.

So far, no one with bone marrow matching Carter’s has turned up among her friends, family or the 852,000 people in the nationwide bone-marrow registry. Carter’s mother, Charlene Ismay of Oxnard, said she believes that many people are afraid of registering for the program because they don’t understand it.

Considering how little is asked of marrow donors--most people in the registry never donate their bone marrow and those who do generally spend just one night in a hospital--Ismay said she is frustrated that more people don’t register.

“I’m facing my daughter’s possible death, and I know there’s a cure and I know there’s a donor,” she said. “I just have to find a match.”

People who want to contribute items for the garage or bake sale may drop them off at Buena High’s front parking lot, 5670 Telegraph Road, from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday. To have items picked up or for information, call Ismay at 988-8944.