The e-mail message popped up on Mike Wilson's phone in January: "Thank you, thank you, thank you. Because of you, I'm still alive."
Wilson, an FDNY firefighter since 2003, didn't save this life during a fire rescue. Rather, he donated bone marrow in 2010, and six years later learned that the time he spent hooked up to needles and a centrifuge gave a single mom with leukemia the chance to see her daughter grow to adulthood.
“Without him, I feel like, yeah, I wouldn't be here," said Amy Alcorn, 47, of Erie, Pa., who received the life-saving transplant.
On Friday, Wilson and another firefighter, Fredrick Perdue, will meet for the first time the people they saved with their donations, through their participation in the Be The Match Registry.
Alcorn was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in 2010 — the same year her own mother died. Alcorn’s daughter, Chelcie, was 14 years old at the time.
"If I wouldn't have had a match that year, she potentially could have buried her mom and her grandmother in the same year," Alcorn said.
Wilson, 36, who also played the hero ten years ago when he rescued an autistic child from a blaze, is eager to meet Alcorn in person. They have spoken on the phone and exchanged emails.
“I guess you could say I was just happy to know that I really helped her, and she made it through all the problems that she was having," said Wilson.
Jonathan Lamont Ragland, 35, still hasn't met Perdue, his donor — he just knows the marrow belonged to a New York City firefighter.
Ragland was 16 when he was diagnosed with essential thrombocythemia, a rare chronic blood disorder. His father, Larry, died of a similar condition in 2001.
The disorder progressed slowly in Ragland’s own body, but in 2013, he learned it had moved to the next stage, and he had leukemia.
His daughter, Jayla, now 7, and son, Braylon, now 6, were too young to understand what was happening, he said. .
"I was actually scared I wasn't going to see them reach 10. Being so young, they just really didn't understand why daddy wasn't home," he said.
Perdue, 46, a Queens native and Bronx resident who joined the department in 1998, had actually signed up for the registry than 20 years ago, soon after serving in the Marine Corps. When he first learned that his marrow was a match, he was surprised the registry had even kept track of how to reach him.
"They told me that I'm a possible match, I was like, wow," he said.
FDNY members make up the New York Blood Center's single largest group of bone marrow and stem cell donors, officials said, and probationary firefighters are encouraged to sign up for the registry during training.
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