BURBANK : Boy Dies Despite Marrow Donor Hunt

More than 1,000 people stepped forward to save Greg Smith, an 11-year-old boy who loved baseball and hockey, but none of them could.

Greg, who fought leukemia for more than two years, died Tuesday at 1 a.m. at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

“He didn’t make it,” said Peg Setti, who had been one of the organizers of a massive community effort to find a bone marrow donor for the boy.

About $21,000 had been raised to pay for the blood tests needed to find a suitable match. Ironically, a potential donor, who matched Greg in five out of six tissue categories, had been found last month.

However, doctors had been waiting for the leukemia to go into remission and for Greg to rebuild his strength before performing the transplant operation.

“He was nowhere near remission to even try it,” Setti said.

Greg’s grandmother, Grace Rivas, said she hoped that the attention showed Greg’s case would inspire people to help other leukemia patients. His parents, Ron and Theresa Smith, were unavailable for comment.

Greg was a fifth-grader at St. Francis Xavier Elementary School.

An effort to raise money for blood tests was started in June by volunteers at St. Francis Xavier Church, where he was a parishioner.