The Perfect Match 

After overcoming a long and lengthy battle with cancer, Jim O’Brien felt like he owed everything to the individual who saved his life.

O’Brien, a die-hard New York Islanders fan from Floral Park, was diagnosed with b-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia in 2019 at age 24. O’Brien had been through a lot – four months of chemotherapy and an initial bone marrow transplant that failed – but through his inner strength and help of the nonprofit organization, Be a Match, he found his stem cell donor in Alissa Watters and underwent a successful bone marrow transplant in 2021.

“Being in good health two years after my transplant, it was always in the back of my mind how I just want to meet my donor,” O’Brien said. “Now the wheels are in motion for that to happen. And I'm just so excited because I just have so much to tell her about the past two years, things that I wouldn't have had if she didn't donate.”

“I'm probably going to give her a big hug and cry my eyes out," he added.

And that’s exactly what he did.

On Saturday, ahead of puck drop between the New York Islanders and Philadelphia Flyers, the long-awaited moment finally arrived. O’Brien and Watters met for the first time in person, sharing a long embrace surrounded by their respective families.

O’Brien was also able to deliver a happy update.

“I got my last biopsy in August,” O’Brien said to her with a smile. “I’m all clean.”

Presented with custom Islanders jerseys, O’Brien beamed with his new threads that sported his last name, while Watters received a jersey that simply had the word “hero” on the back.

“I’m so happy to hear and see you’re doing so well,” Watters said to O’Brien on Saturday. “With all you went through, you did a great job.”

O’Brien made it a point to thank Watters for coming all the way from Iowa, where she resides and attends college to become a nurse while working part-time in medicine. Although Long Island is a far journey from Iowa, Watters said being in attendance and meeting O’Brien was more than a reward.

“It’s so surreal to be here,” Watters said. “Getting to see Jim and his family was amazing. I can’t imagine what he’s feeling after all that he’s been though, I’m so excited and grateful that I got to be a part of it. Now being here, I’m so overcome with emotion, it’s crazy.”

As a sophomore at the University of Iowa, Watters signed up for Be the Match and got the call five years later that she's the best match for a leukemia patient. She didn't hesitate to go through with the stem cell donation to help someone in need.

Be The Match operates the national registry of blood stem cell and marrow donors to help cure people with life-threatening blood cancers—like leukemia and lymphoma—or other blood disorders like sickle cell. The organization connects patients with matching donors to give them a second chance at life. Be the Match has facilitated more than 120,000 blood stem cell transplants in the last 35 years.

Following the successful bone marrow transplant, O'Brien reached out to Watters to express his gratitude for her donation.

"When Jim texted me that day, it was the best message I could receive," Watters said.
I was so emotional and grateful that it worked out for him. To hear from him made everything come full circle."

It was only fitting that O’Brien met his match at an Islanders game. As a life-long fan, he leaned on his favorite team to get himself through his hardest moments.

“It's really hard to tell my story without the Islanders,” O’Brien said. “The entire time I was going through treatment and recovering from my transplant, they went deep in the playoffs during that time. Cheering them on distracted me from everything that was on my mind in treatment. I never felt like a sick person when I was watching those games.”

His treatment in 2021 coincided with the Islanders’ run to the Stanley Cup Semifinals, where they took the Tampa Bay Lightning to seven games. O’Brien was staying in Houston, Texas, at the time to receive treatment. Due to the state of his health and the ongoing pandemic at the time, he was confined to his apartment.

“Those Islanders playoff games were my escape,” O’Brien said. “I would come home from the clinic and then watch an Islanders playoff win and keep advancing. It was the thing I looked forward to the most every single day. I would get up in the morning with a smile on my face just remembering that the Islanders played at night, and that three hours, the game was the only thing in the world that's really mattered to me.”

He vividly remembers his favorite Islanders moment from that playoff run – Game Six of the third round. 

“I remember they were down 2-1 in the third period,” O’Brien said. "Scott Mayfield comes zooming down the wing and he just absolutely snipes one right by the pipe. It made me so elated. I was losing my mind and my apartment. I was hugging my friends. I was just so happy that that puck went in, and I was so happy that Mayfield was the guy to do it.”

Through his 20 years as an Islander fan, O’Brien somehow never made it to a playoff game in-person until last season, when he experienced his first playoff game at UBS Arena. After a successful transplant and an extensive health journey with ups and downs, experiencing the playoffs for the first time resonated with him on an emotional level.

“I remember standing there and taking it all in,” O’Brien said. “With all the chanting and all the noise… after wrapping up my treatment, it felt like a great culmination of everything that I had gone through.”

Meeting Watters on Saturday compared to that full circle feeling. O’Brien got to take it all in at UBS Arena while expressing his gratitude for the person who saved his life. 

“She’s somebody who made such an enormous sacrifice for a stranger,” O’Brien said of Watters. “She was willing to donate her time and her health to someone she didn’t even know. That sacrifice really is incredible.” 

“I would do it again in a heartbeat,” Watters said.