Asian American Donor Program

The Diablo Valley Chapter of the JACL actively participates and encourages others to participate in bone marrow registration drives with the Asian American Donor Program (AADP).  The Asian American Donor Program is dedicated to increasing the availability of potential stem cell donors for patients with life threatening diseases curable with a stem cell transplant.

On February 14th the AADP introduced Yul Kwon as their new spokesperson as he donated $50,000 to AADP.  Yul is better known as the winner of $1 million as the last contestant on the Survivor Cook Islands.  Now that the show is over he has decided that he wants to help create a few survivors himself.  Yul’s childhood friend and college roommate, Evan Chen, was diagnosed at the age of 20 with leukemia during their sophomore year at Stanford University and was in urgent need of a marrow/blood stem cell transplant.  Yul and Evan and the nationwide network of Lambda Epsilon fraternities registered thousands of donors.  Evan found a matching donor and had a marrow transplant.  Evan survived for one year before the leukemia came back.  He passed away in July 1996.