SPOKANE, Wash. – A grandmother from Deer Park is on a mission. Jeana Moore is walking all the way to Seattle from eastern Washington to raise awareness of the dire need of stem cell and marrow donors, after watching her granddaughter beat Leukemia at a young age.
“The possibility is tremendous, that you could save someone’s life by donating your cells,” Jeana Moore, founder of the Jada Bascom Foundation said.
Step by step, Moore is recruiting strangers to save lives, just like her granddaughter, Jada Bascom, was saved years ago.
“It took thousands of people to save Jada’s life, and the first one was a nurse at Holy Family Hospital, and she saw a what you call petechia, a little red dot on Jada’s skin,” Moore said. “And at one month old, she was officially diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia.”
According to the National Marrow Donor Program, every three to four minutes, someone in the United States is diagnosed with a blood cancer. And like Bascom, most patients don’t have a fully matched donor in their family, so that’s when they turn to unrelated donors; sometimes, those donors come from across the world, like Bascom’s donor, Tortsen Huber from Germany.
“Jada celebrated in April her 17th birthday, because of the generosity of her donor,” Moore said.
Out of 11,000,000 people searched, Bascom’s donor was her perfect match. And now, her grandma is on a mission to find matches for more cancer patients across the country.
“Because of the difficult our family went through and the difficulty in finding donors and seeing patients around us who didn’t find their matches, and who passed away, I decided I wanted to help others find their match and we founded the Jada Bascom Foundation in 2009,” Moore said.
And so, “Steps-to-Marrow” took off. Moore has walked millions of steps, traveled far distances, for the good of others.
“In October of 2009, I left on my first walk. I walked from the Fred Hutchinson’s Cancer Center to Los Angeles and from Los Angeles to New York City,” she said.
Alone with her pack, a good pair of shoes, and what she calls a meditative mindset, Moore is taking on a massive length of road to raise money for her the mission of her granddaughter’s foundation; finding stem cell and bone marrow donors for those who need them, just like Bascom did.
“What it does, walking in this way, relying on the generosity of others, it brings everyone into the walk,” Moore said.
This is Moore’s fourth “Steps-to-Marrow” walk and she’s on a journey from Deer Park all the way to Seattle, a total of around 300 miles. She started her walk on Monday.
All the way there, Moore said she is relying on the goodness of others for food, water, and housing; this often looks like sleeping in a church, fire station, or sometimes, she said people even invite her into their home.
“If I’m out in the wilderness, I can pitch my tent,” Moore said.
Moore is averaging around 12 miles a day. On Wednesday she got closer to Airway Heights, and her plan is to make it to Seattle Children’s Hospital in 43 days. It’s a journey most people would never take on, but for Moore it’s all worth it if someone’s life can be saved like Bascom’s was – she’s now cancer free.
If you would like to donate to “Steps-to-Marrow” click here. And for information on how to register to become a stem cell or marrow donor, click here.
