Mandi Schwartz’s family and friends have been carrying on her legacy ever since she lost her battle with cancer.
The Run for Mandi has been going on for eight years now to help raise money and awareness for stem cell donation, and this year they added a new day to the run.
“With the addition of this extra day this year we sure turned a fun day event into a nice weekend, with a lot of the community, obviously, supporting the weekends festivities," said event organizer Jeremy Schwartz
The day consisted of tables of volunteers handing out forms and swabs for people to sign up to a database of potential donors, a process that takes mere minutes.
The room had plenty of hockey players. From the Saskatoon Blades to NHL Stanley cup winning St. Louis Blues Brayden Schenn and Jaden Schwartz, who is Mandi’s brother.
Organizers said the morning brought in over 60 people swabbing their cheek to become a potential stem cell donor.
Also in attendance were Michael Hellrich and Regan Brown, who were able to share their amazing story.
Hellrich signed up with “Be the Match” bone marrow registry at a St.Louis Blues game. He later found out that he could donate to Brown who was diagnosed with Leukemia in 2017. Out of 30 million donors, they were a perfect match.
“It’s a special story, they played it today for everyone and talked about it, it’s kind of hard to watch, you get a little bit sad, but it’s an amazing story with those two,: said Jaden, happy that the two made the journey to be here for the Run For Mandi.
The run begins at 12 p.m on Sunday at River Landing.
