Joey Renick and I were best friends in grade school. We were inseparable and always over at each other's house. On February 12, 2016, at age 22, Joey relapsed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) for a third time. His best chance to beat the leukemia this time is receiving a bone marrow transplant.

I saw overwhelming support for him and his family on social media and everyone kept asking how they can help. I thought a good way for the community to feel like they are helping is to host a Bone Marrow Drive and let friends and family add themselves to the registry.

I emailed Delete Blood Cancer to host a drive, and the request was accepted. I then requested permission from our grade school, St. Stephen Protomartyr, to host the event. They also accepted, and then I started putting my plan of attack together.

Together, my mom and I recruited over 25 volunteers to help with the event. I orchestrated a training/kickoff meeting to train all volunteers and to discuss the best way to promote the event. We put a schedule together for the volunteers so all knew their designated tasks. I created an article for the parish weekend bulletin, made posters/signs, fliers were created to post around the community, along with creating a Facebook page, which reached 1,500 people, and blasting the message through Social Media.  A press release was created and sent to multiple St. Louis media outlets. I was fortunate to get a blurb in the St. Louis Post Dispatch and a PSA message on a local radio station.

From following a detailed timeline and directing a large group of volunteers, my team and I were able to register an additional 212 new donors to the registry and raised over $1,000 in monetary donations to help offset the cost of the registration.