This Friendship’s Hard to Match

For Michelle Chernikoff Anderson, being a bone-marrow donor has given her more than the chance to save a life. It has given her a lasting friendship.

The Ventura resident last week reunited with Katie May Berrecloth, 18, whom Anderson helped save years ago through her marrow donation. Berrecloth of Alberta, Canada, was diagnosed with leukemia when she was 18 months old.

Anderson, 36, a routine blood donor earlier, said she joined the national bone marrow registry when she learned there was a need for Jewish donors.

“That sparked my interest,” she said.

If patients cannot find a donor within their family, their best chances rest with finding a person with the same ethnicity.

The first time around, Anderson didn’t find a match. Her information then was placed in the national registry, and two years later, in 1991, she got a call. Doctors had found a match in a 5-year-old girl from Canada with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

“When I got the call, I remember thinking, ‘Wow, what an incredible opportunity,’ ” Anderson said. “A door had opened right in front of me.”

Today, acute lymphoblastic leukemia is the most common cancer in children under 15, occurring in one out of every 29,000 children in the United States, according to the National Cancer Institute.

But advances in treatment, which include bone-marrow transplants, have increased the percent of children who live five years or more from 5% in 1960 to 85% today.

Berrecloth is one of those success stories. She and Anderson first met in 1999, when a national television talk show brought them to Los Angeles for an appearance. They continued to keep in touch, exchanging letters and e-mails.

When Anderson and her husband, Santos Gomez, recently learned that Berrecloth was graduating from high school this year, they asked the teen to visit them in California. Berrecloth arrived at the couple’s home in Ventura on Wednesday. “We had corresponded and had a real bond, but there was a lot we didn’t know about each other,” Anderson said.

Now cancer-free, Berrecloth said she wanted to become an elementary school teacher. She said she was grateful for her transplant and hoped others would participate in the donor program.

“I’m hoping that people see that it’s something that is relatively painless and simple,” Anderson said. “Through a simple deed, you can have the fulfillment of changing someone’s life.”

For more information on the National Marrow Donor Program call 1-800-MARROW2.