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Published July 07, 2007 06:04 pm - Samples taken during a bone-marrow donor drive set for Friday could lead to a life-saving transplant for a 14-year-old Carl Junction girl. Donor drive set for Carl Junction teen By Susan Redden
sredden@joplinglobe.com Samples taken during a bone-marrow donor drive set for Friday could lead to a life-saving transplant for a 14-year-old Carl Junction girl. Kara Richardson is the hoped-for beneficiary of the effort, organized by members of the Joplin Fire Department. “I’m hoping one of us matches Kara, but if it matches any kid, that’s a life we can have an opportunity to save,” said Gerald Ezell, a battalion chief with the department. After tests of both parents, her brother and other relatives, doctors at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City still are looking for a donor for a bone-marrow transplant for Kara, who has been battling acute lymphoblastic leukemia for nearly a year. The local drive is set for 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday at the main station of the Joplin Fire Department, 303 E. Third St. Kara’s father, David Richardson, is a fire captain and has worked with the department for 15 years. More than a dozen members of the Fire Department, their wives and several other residents were tested as potential donors at a drive in Olathe, Kan., on June 16. Ezell said he has been working to get the local drive organized since the Olathe trip, when he talked to the mother of Weston Funk, an Olathe boy whose life was saved by a bone-marrow transplant. “She put me in touch with the National Marrow Donor Program in St. Louis, which is where they’ll be coming from for the testing,” he said. “All I had to do was line up at least 50 people for testing; we have 67 so far.” Ezell said he would like the testing to become an annual event, in honor of Kara. Members of the Fire Department “are close-knit, like a family” and he said many feel as though Kara is their daughter. “But as close as we are, I still can’t fathom what they’ve gone through,” he added. The last year has included somewhere between 80 and 100 days at Children’s Mercy Hospital, said Jeanne Richardson, her mother. The hospital stays have been for intensive chemotherapy treatments, and for treatment for reactions to that therapy, including serious infections as the chemotherapy attacked Kara’s immune system. At least three times, infections prompted rushed returns to the hospital, once by air ambulance. 
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