Georgia grandmother donated stem cells to a stranger overseas. Now they’re family.
The handwritten letter arrived at Dale Tingle’s home in Watkinsville after months of her praying for the survival of a person she’d never met.
She had been told little about the person — only that the individual was 20 years old and dying of leukemia. A scouring of the whole world had turned up Tingle as the only known person in possession of a possible lifeline: a perfect match of stem cells. So she had donated some and waited.
She and her husband, their friends and family, prayed for God to nourish and heal the stranger, wherever and whoever the person was. And because they didn’t know the person’s name, she chose one: “Rocky,” the same as the fighter who, in the movies, wouldn’t give up, no matter the odds.
Then the letter arrived, festooned with glitter. It was written in English, not the writer’s native language. No identity was disclosed due to strict rules governing contact between a donor and recipient in the first two years.
“I am 20 years old. I don’t know wether (sic) you know me. ... By now, you have become one of the most important people in my life. Without you I wouldn’t be alive anymore. ... I had already given up hope. And now I am wondering — what do you tell someone who has saved your life?”
The letter went on to say, “It’s an amazing feeling to know that there is someone on the other side of the world who I am connected to so deeply, although I have never met you before.”
The writer added, if it’s OK, “I am going to see you as soon as possible.”
That eventual meeting was the beginning of an enduring bond between Kevin Krüger, a 6-foot-something German from a small town 4,500 miles away, and Tingle, a 5-foot-2-inch Georgia grandmother living near Athens.
Krüger has been to the United States three times now, most recently this month. In that time, he has never visited New York City or Washington, D.C., or Hollywood or the Grand Canyon. He mostly likes sticking closer to what feels almost like home. All he really wants to do on his 10-day visits is spend time with Tingle and her family. Chatting on porches. Playing in the creek behind the house with Tingle’s grandchildren. Attending church with the family. Listening to crickets in the woods around the home.
Now 33, cancer free and working as a state government aide in northern Germany, Krüger can still feel the influence of his near death. “I think that the leukemia had a big impact on my personality,” he said. “I just enjoy the little moments.”
Grateful is a word he uses a lot.
Fighting ‘like a lion’
Krüger was 19 when doctors told him his recent nosebleed and the pain in his leg bones were from leukemia, a cancer he had never heard of.
The treatment was aggressive — round after round of chemotherapy. Bedridden in a hospital in Hamburg, his weight dropped from 176 pounds to 88.
His mother, who worked and cared for his two younger sisters, visited him in the hospital daily. Then, she’d go to a hospice center to see Krüger’s father, who was dying of brain cancer. To try to lift his mother’s spirits, Krüger smiled and told jokes often, one of his sisters remembered. But when it came to his illness, she said, he fought “like a lion.”
Still, the cancer wouldn’t leave him. A doctor told him his only remaining option was a stem cell transplant.
Stem cells can be used to take on a variety of dangerous diseases, from sickle cell disease to blood cancers. In the case of cancer, medical teams blast a patient’s body with especially powerful chemotherapy with hopes of killing both the cancer and the patient’s own remaining stem cells. Then they inject into the patient donated stem cells in an attempt to restart the person’s system for creating new blood cells. About 70% of the time, patients can’t find a good stem cell match from someone in their family.
Krüger asked about his chances for survival. He was told 50/50, assuming they could find someone who was a match.
His family members got tested. None matched. Two stem cell and bone marrow registry events were held near his hometown attended by a total of about 3,000 people. Still no luck — at least not for him. Twenty people who tested were later found to be compatible donors for other people.
Then his doctor told him somebody had turned up in the United States who might be a match for him.
Tingle was working as a dental hygienist and, at the time, was preparing to run the Boston Marathon. She was 54 years old — well beyond what is often considered the prime age for stem cell donation.
Less than a year and a half earlier, she’d had the inside of her cheek swabbed at an Athens stem cell/bone marrow registry event, which was organized to help a local 3-year-old boy battling a rare form of leukemia.
Tingle wasn’t a match for the boy.
But she was notified just before Christmas in 2010 that she appeared to be a match for someone else with leukemia in urgent need of her stem cells to stay alive.
Would she donate?
‘Dear rescuer of my son’
Tingle said she never considered not donating. Initially, she thought that might involve doctors drilling into her hip bone to extract bone marrow that has stem cells. She later learned she would have a different procedure that was much less invasive. Either way, she was up for it.
“There are not many opportunities in life to know that you have truly saved someone’s life,” Tingle said.
She had her blood tested and traveled to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, to have a physical to ensure she was healthy enough. Each step of the way, she could have dropped out.
Her stem cell donation took place in two sessions, each several hours long, over two days. A needle was put in one arm and her blood traveled by tube into a machine that stripped out stem cells and then returned the blood to her via another tube to her other arm.
The only side effect she can recall: a short-term migraine headache. All her costs, from medical to transportation and lodging, were covered.
Months later, Tingle began receiving letters from Krüger and his family in Germany. They still didn’t know each other’s names. So one letter from Krüger’s mom began this way: “Dear rescuer of my son.”
Krüger and Tingle met in person for the first time in 2019. She recalled the first moments she and her husband, Steve, a retired auto repair shop owner, saw Krüger inside the Atlanta airport.
“It was so emotional,” she said. She wept and “he gave some tight hugs. ... It was an awesome thing, the realness of it. It had been such a long journey.”
Recounting this recently on her front porch, she gives Krüger another hug and leans her head against him.
‘The differences we think we have’
Tingle is certain it wasn’t just luck that led to her being able to save a stranger. “In God’s providence, I was there, having been formed in my mother’s womb with just what was needed genetically to be the one,” she said.
She marvels at the connections that brought her and Krüger together. And she said she hopes others take the same step she did to get on a registry in case their stem cells can help save someone else.
Last year, Tingle thought it would be nice to bring Krüger to see the little boy who had been the reason she initially got on a stem cell registry. She didn’t know the boy or his family, but a friend of hers did. When the friend informed Tingle that no match had been found for the boy, Tingle was heartbroken. She incorrectly assumed the boy had died.
He had not. His parents said he later received a donation of stem cells harvested from the cord blood — found in the placenta and umbilical cord — of a mother giving birth. Mollie and Josh Billings said their son now has no sign of cancer and recently graduated from high school. The family has moved from Watkinsville to California. But they said they’d like to meet Tingle and Krüger.
The Billingses are awed by the links among strangers. As their son grew up, he often loved to play in a creek beside his best friend’s house in Watkinsville. They learned it is the same creek Krüger revels playing in with Tingle’s grandkids.
“Full circle,” Josh Billings said. “It feels like we are all connected. For all the differences we think we have with each other, we have something similar.”
One woman, living thousands of miles away from Krüger, would be his nearly perfect stem cell match.
He plans to keep returning to Georgia to see her and her family. This year, he brought along his girlfriend and one of his sisters. The Tingles hope to visit Germany and see Krüger’s mom and other family members.
He’s grateful for having a longer life. And for getting a treasure beyond stem cells. “It is the biggest gift in my life to know these people.”
These are the ways stem cells are harvested from donors:
From the blood using a special machine, similar to the way that people donate blood platelets or plasma. This is the most common procedure for gathering stem cells.
From bone marrow in the donor’s hip bone, a procedure in which the donor is under general anesthesia.
From donated cord blood from the placenta and umbilical cord after a baby is born.
How to donate:
There are a variety of options to get on a registry. Go to dkms.org/register-now or to NMDP.org (formerly known as the National Marrow Donor Program and Be The Match) to have a swab kit mailed to you. Or, to find a registry event, visit dkms.org.
Different registries have different age limitations. A donor’s health is also taken into consideration. One big need is to have donors from different ethnic backgrounds, which can be an important factor in finding the closest potential stem cell matches.
