Giving on and off the field / Cape grad, Villanova star donates marrow for girl
(Source: The Press of Atlantic City
Appeared: May 7, 2010)
VILLANOVA, Penn. - Matt Szczur did what most freshman football players do when they first get to Villanova University -- he registered to become a bone marrow donor.
He didn't think much of it at the time and never expected the phone call he received last fall when he was told someone needed his help. But on Tuesday, he sat in a chair at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia with needles in both arms donating his peripheral blood cells to a little girl.
"I wasn't even sure what the donor program was," Szczur said during a news conference Thursday on campus. "I was just going through the motions and getting my cheeks swabbed."
The 2007 Lower Cape May Regional High School graduate learned he was a match for a 19-month-old girl with leukemia in November. He doesn't know anything more about her because of the National Marrow Donor Program's confidentiality clauses.
