Thanks to Tiger Hockey, its fans and a pair of corporate partners, the Schwartz family is another step closer to locating “Mandi's Hero.”

A successful fund-raising event at Carrabba's Italian Grill and Outback Steakhouse on Tuesday, July 6, generated more than $5,000 in proceeds toward finding a cord-blood donor for Mandi Schwartz, sister of Colorado College sophomore-to-be Rylan and incoming freshman Jaden.

The event featured a dinner with several CC players and members of the coaching staff. Approximately 250 people attended, including school president Richard F. Celeste along with head coach Scott Owens and assistant coach Joe Bonnett.  

Team members who participated included Tiger-to-be Jaden Schwartz, who recently emerged as a first-round draft pick of the NHL's St. Louis Blues, as well as David Civitarese, Nick Dineen, Andrew Hamburg and Tim Hall. 

Mandi Schwartz, who plays hockey for Yale University, currently is fighting a second bout with leukemia and needs a stem-cell transplant to survive. While her doctors have found a partially matched bone-marrow donor, that particular therapy can result in a life-threatening graft-versus-host (GVH) response if the donor cells recognize the recipient as foreign.

Cord blood offers the same stem cells but rarely causes a life-threatening GVH response.

Mandi's biggest challenge is that the Schwartz family, of Wilcox, Saskatchewan, is of Russian, Ukrainian and German descent. They need to find someone with a similar background to be the proper match.

The campaign to help Mandi, spearheaded by Dr. Tedd Collins of Connecticut, is reaching out to people globally. Yale, USA Hockey, Hockey Canada, the NCAA, ESPN, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF), the NHL, Sirius Satellite radio (NHL Home Ice/channel 208) and ABC News all have joined in the effort to spread the word and ultimately locate a match.

Collins lost his daughter Natasha, a Yale Medical School student of mixed race, in August 2009 to GVH disease after a bone-marrow transplant that did not closely enough match her genetic makeup. He and his wife, Anne, subsequently founded www.BecomeMyHero.org to “ensure that mixed heritage families and individuals receive equal access to the life-saving potential of effectively safe stem-cell transplants.”

Tiger Hockey reached out to alumni, season-ticket holders, fans of the team and supporters of Colorado College athletics in general, making them aware of Mandi's need, as well as the recent fundraiser on her behalf.

Additional information on the “Become Mandi's Hero” campaign is available at: http://www.BecomeMandisHero.org.