Boise resident Gage Tappe was at a low point in his life, suffering from the depression and anxiety that has plagued him for years. He was up late one night, scrolling the internet, “as any good Millennial does,” he said, and saw a Facebook video about Be The Match, a nonprofit that matches donors with patients for lifesaving bone marrow and blood stem cell transplants.
The video featured a 5-year-old girl, the age of his young daughter who was asleep in an adjoining room. The young girl in the video never found a match and later passed away.
“It’s 1 in the morning and I’m bawling,” Tappe remembered. “I signed up, and totally forgot that I signed up until a week later when I got the swab kit.”
In October 2018, Tia Jensen of West Richland, Wash., was coming to grips with a leukemia diagnosis. It was yet another health challenge for her after living with multiple sclerosis for 20 years. “I decided to fight it,” she said.
She began cancer treatments in Seattle while a search began for a donor for a lifesaving blood stem cell transplant. Through the database, Tappe came up as a possible match for Jensen.
In early 2019, Be The Match reached out to Tappe and asked if he was still willing to donate. “Absolutely,” was his answer. “I was taught when someone asks for help, if you can, you help them.”
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“She turned out to be an amazing individual,” he said. “When you donate you don’t know who it’s for and it doesn’t matter who it’s for. You’re there to help. But Tia turned out to be this amazing individual with this big family. It was so exciting to see that.”
Tappe and Jensen got to meet one another in person for the first time in a segment on The Today Show, on the “Milestones We Missed” segment that aired on Sept. 2.
“He did the greatest thing anyone ever did for me. He gave me my life back, gave me the opportunity to be with my family and my kids,” Jensen said.
Tappe was grateful in his own way. “It helped me get my head space to a place where I can turn things around. No matter what we might think, we have things that we can bring to the table of life. We can leave the world a better place.”
