Anna's story
Can you be a super-hero and still save someone’s life when you’re halfway around the world? It turns out you can.
When she was 7 years old, Anna Delaney started coming down with high fevers that kept persisting. Her family learned that she had
chronic active Epstein-Barr virus, a rare disease that caused Anna’s body to make too many lymphocytes, a type of white blood cells. She would require a blood stem cell transplant—but first she needed to find a genetically matched donor.
When
Anna’s little sister turned out to not be a close enough match, the DeLaneys turned to the Be The Match Registry®. There were two perfect matches on the registry, however, both donors were unavailable. That’s when Klaus Schmidt stepped up for Anna—all
the way from Germany.
Two years later and now 10 years old, on February 21, Anna met Klaus, the hero who came to her rescue with his blood stem cell donation. Back then, Klaus only knew he was donating to a little girl somewhere in America.
But now he got to see her in person, after traveling from his home in Germany to meet Anna and her family in Phoenix, AZ.
“I thought about Anna’s donor a lot after her transplant. I always hoped I’d get a chance to meet him and tell him how
grateful I am to him for saving our daughter’s life. This is truly an amazing moment for our family,” shared Anna’s mom Melissa.
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