ST. LOUIS — On a night Kraken forward Jaden Schwartz made his on-ice return to a town he once led to Stanley Cup triumph, a woman whose life he helped save remained grateful from afar for his time spent here.
Regan Brown, 24, lives 650 miles from St. Louis in Mobile, Alabama, and grew up knowing nothing about hockey. But some monumental events triggered by Schwartz led to Brown, who had been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in June 2017, receiving a bone-marrow transplant. Schwartz and a foundation named in honor of his late sister Mandi, a former hockey player who had died after being diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, had been publicizing the need for Blues fans to sign on to a bone-marrow donor registry to match them with patients in need.
One such fan, season-ticket holder Michael Hellrich, signed up after seeing Schwartz make his appeal and years later wound up being the worldwide registry’s only potential match for Brown out of 30 million candidates.
Brown had her transplant surgery in October 2017 — four months after being diagnosed — and last fall celebrated her fifth anniversary of recovery, a survival milestone that officially means her leukemia is considered in remission.
“I definitely feel grateful and blessed,” Brown said by phone Wednesday as Schwartz prepared to play the Blues for the first time since signing a 2021 free-agent deal with the Kraken, having missed last season’s visit due to injury. “I do still struggle daily with anxiety and fear of it coming back and relapsing. But I definitely feel on the blessed side of things, because it could have been worse than it was.”
Schwartz, following the Kraken’s morning skate here Tuesday, said the story of Hellrich donating to Brown will forever remain with him as a special tribute to a sister who died at 23 when unable to find her own donor match in time. Brown, Hellrich, Schwartz and his parents, Carol and Rick, all met for the first time before a Blues game their championship season in January 2019.
“That’s obviously a really, really special story,” Schwartz said. “It meant a lot to a lot of people. It was nice that my family was here to meet them and just a special moment. We’re glad that we could help out. Obviously, we couldn’t get a match for Mandi but to help other people makes the most of things.”
The registry organization that Schwartz drew Blues fans to is Be The Match — operated by the National Marrow Donor Program — and the same one Kraken teammate Morgan Geekie last week asked fans via a team social-media posting to sign up with to find a bone-marrow donor for Isola Fiddick. She’s a Seattle kindergarten student and a huge Geekie fan who experienced a relapse a few weeks ago in her battle with anaplastic large cell lymphoma.
Geekie met Isola last season at a Hockey Fights Cancer Night game and again last fall when the Team USA women played Canada in an exhibition at Climate Pledge Arena. Back then, Isola’s cancer had been in remission, and he’s seen her again since the relapse.
“We’ve grown pretty close, obviously, with everything that’s going on,” Geekie said Wednesday. “It’s an unfortunate situation, but we’re looking out for the best for her and everything.”
Geekie said he didn’t know about the success Schwartz had in St. Louis helping find a donor match between Blues fan Hellrich and Brown.
“That’s awesome,” Geekie said. “You know, we’ve got a lot of pretty good guys in this room. And we’re pretty lucky with what we do and the platform we have. So to see him use it the way he did is awesome. I think I’m just trying to do the same thing and put the word out there.”
Brown was 18 when diagnosed and had her 24th birthday three weeks ago. But that celebration paled in comparison with the one that accompanied her five-year surgery anniversary, with her mother and two best friends taking her on a surprise trip to Savannah, Georgia.
Shortly before, donor Hellrich, his wife, Becky, and daughter, Adelaide, 9, had visited Alabama to stay with Brown and meet her family. The pair first met at that 2019 hockey game — with rules preventing the identity of donors from becoming known to patients for at least a year following surgery.
But after their initial meeting, they’ve met again at a Blues game in Nashville and went up to Schwartz’s native Saskatchewan to take part in a fundraising run for the Mandi Schwartz Foundation. Hellrich, a cloud architect for a St. Louis area technology company, calls Brown “the older sister my daughter never had” and feels a special bond exists between his family and hers.
Hellrich, 43, said he’d never have signed on to the registry if not for the appeals by Schwartz and added that the Kraken are his “other favorite team” besides the Blues. Even though he was contacted four years after putting his name on the registry, he never hesitated at flying to Washington, D.C., to have the invasive donor procedure done,
“I know now that if nothing else, there’s something in my life that I did that I can be proud of,” he said. “That part of it is always going to stay with me.”
Brown doesn’t remember much from the hazy, fear-filled months that followed her surgery. She was “very sick” at that time, spending 100 days of postoperative recovery in a New Orleans hospital — knowing there were no other donors on the registry if her transplant didn’t take.
“But I do remember just wondering who Michael was and what really made him want to give to a random stranger,” she said. “I looked forward every day to meeting the man that saved my life.”
And Brown anticipates more meetups to come. She also recently purchased an herbal remedies business and tries to make the most of every day she’s been given.
That includes keeping track of the Kraken, saying she’s a fan of whatever team Schwartz plays for — knowing now that he was Hellrich’s motivation. She’d stayed as a houseguest of Schwartz’s parents during her Saskatchewan visit and grew “very close” with his father, Rick, speaking weekly by phone up until his death at age 59 from a heart attack in November 2020.
“He used to express that I reminded him a lot of Mandi,” Brown said. “So I’m sure it brought a little bit of sadness. But they also probably felt very successful using her platform to save other people.”
To register with Be The Match or for more information, go to my.bethematch.org.