Andy & Leah: A Gift of Life and a moment to remember

The most impactful moment of the Lightning’s 3-0 win over the Flyers Monday night arrived on the jumbotron.

Life saved. Life given.

That was the message written down the respective T-Shirts of Leah Falk and Andy King for the Lightning’s Hockey Fights Cancer game. A stem cell donor and the surviving recipient who would meet for the very first time that night.

It’s also the message Gift of Life endures in its lifesaving work to aid the fight. At 48 years old, Westminster, Colorado native Andy King was diagnosed with acute leukemia—a husband and father of two with a son to watch graduate and a daughter to watch walk down the aisle. After learning that he would need a stem cell transplant to survive, and that his family members were not compatible donors, he turned to Gift of Life.

Gift of Life is a blood stem cell and bone marrow registry that cures blood cancer and inherited immune disorders by engaging the public and finding matches for transplants. The process goes like this: A cheek swab of your HLA (human leukocyte antigen) type allows you to join their registry. Sometime in the future, if you’re found to be a match—and it’s no guarantee—a blood test is taken to see if you’re healthy enough to donate. If you are, blood stem cells or bone marrow is drawn and your donation is transplanted into the patient.

Now, the idea of finding an exact match of two people’s blood tests from any given location might sound like a daunting process. But Andy—even through his toughest days—found it to be surprisingly seamless.

“I know that sounds so weird when you're so sick,” Andy tells me the morning after the game. “Going through all that, you unfortunately have a dark outlook on things at times. You don't know how everything is going to go. And to have something this life-changing go as easy as it did was very surprising.”

Gift of Life goes the extra mile to find these matches, even spreading word internationally to find the right donor.

“I was so lucky that I was able to hit a match so fast…you never think in a million years your life-saving person is an entire country away, and more than half your age. It was unbelievable.”

Gift of Life likes to say that it all starts with one remarkable person. In Andy’s case, that person was Leah Falk.

Leah is a bioengineering major at the University of Maryland and was fascinated when passing a Gift of Life rep one day around campus. Yes, to make matters even more mystifying here, Leah’s initial cheek swap was a completely spontaneous decision. The random act of kindness took five minutes of her time.

“They were telling us about it and they were like, ‘It's super easy, you should do it. You could save a life,'” Leah explained after the Lightning win. “I thought it sounded cool and I'm very motivated by health sciences and all that. But it was super easy. I wasn't expecting to actually match with someone, but I'm really glad it did.”

When Leah was notified that she was found to be a match, the moment almost didn’t feel real.

“I had kind of forgotten I even swabbed at the moment—it felt surreal. I was like, ‘Oh my God, I actually matched with someone.’”

After a number of doctor’s appointments and a few rounds of bloodwork to boost her stem cells, Leah was deemed ready for the donation. The entire process took about six weeks, with Leah’s bioengineering professors gladly providing her with time away when necessary.

“It's kind of hard to believe that just putting some of your cells in someone else's body is going to save their life, but when you hear it from a nurse who sees both sides, it’s different,” Leah said. “After that, I went to Georgetown Hospital and that's when I had the donation.”

A year after Leah’s donation, Andy King was struggling to find the right words to thank the person who saved his life. Gift of Life requires a one-year window of health before a donor and recipient can opt to contact each other. But when they asked Andy if he’d like to reach out, his answer was “of course.”

“She's a 20-year-old from the East Coast, that's all they tell you,” Andy explained. “And I really struggled for weeks to decide what to say.”

Leah’s experience was almost identical.

“I just knew that I had matched with a man in his 40s and that was it,” she said. “And then I think a year after the donation was when we were both able to get each other's contact information…then Gift of Life contacted us about meeting in person.”

Andy and Leah were asked if they’d like an all-expensed trip to Tampa to meet for the very first time at a Lightning game. Their responses were swift: absolutely. Within a week and a half, they were on a flight to Tampa.

“Me and my whole family, we are just sports nuts," said Andy. “I mean, just so to have it associated with any type of sporting organization was incredible.”

Then the moment. With nine minutes left in the second period, Andy took to the cameras and a sold-out Benchmark International Arena crowd to meet his “Life Given” for the first time.

It was one of those heart capturing scenes that manages to pull your entire life into perspective in two seconds. The dry eyes were few and far between. The men were all doing the same thing—you know the thing—in which we all look around and laugh at one another’s emotions spilling right out of our faces, Lightning coach Jon Cooper not excluded.

Andy and Leah’s meeting turned quickly to friendship, with Andy and his wife meeting Leah and her boyfriend after the game to talk about the night they just experienced.

“It was crazy because in my head, I just knew there was this man and that I helped save his life,” Leah said. “Putting an actual face to him was incredible. He was so sweet and so kind and I kind of can't believe that I played a role in his life, but it was amazing. He's amazing and I'm really glad I got the chance to meet him.”

“Leah was incredible,” Andy echoed. “You never know when you meet somebody…My wife and I raved about Leah and her boyfriend too, Noah. They were incredible. We literally could have stayed up talking to them all night long.”

Leah now heads back to Maryland to continue her pursuit in bioengineering and stem cell research with a PhD in her sights.

Andy will continue his rejuvenated shot at life with his family in Colorado.

“To think about being able to go to my son's wedding, my daughter's wedding, walk my daughter down the aisle, that stuff starts to hit you a little bit more now.”

To learn more about Gift of Life, visit giftoflife.org. If you'd like to join their online registry, click here.