At 73 years old, Jeana Moore is trekking 356 miles across the Pacific Northwest to champion blood cancer awareness and stem cell donor registration. Her journey, titled Steps to Marrow 5, began on September 7 in Seattle and spans 45 days through Washington, British Columbia, and Vancouver Island before looping back through the Olympic Peninsula to finish in Olympia on October 21, according to the Jada Bascom Foundation.
The Family Diagnosis That Sparked a Mission
Moore’s cross-state trek stems from a family medical crisis in 2007, when her newborn granddaughter, Jada, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia at just one month old. After chemotherapy failed, attending physicians at Holy Family Hospital stated the infant required a bone marrow transplant to survive, as noted by the Jada Bascom Foundation. Finding a matching human leukocyte antigen (HLA) tissue type proved challenging within the United States, where no domestic donor matched the infant.
A compatible match was ultimately identified in Germany through a registry where Torsten Huber had registered over a year prior after reading a newspaper article. According to registry data, Germany maintains more than 10.6 million registered donors, and nearly 40% of unrelated stem cell transplants worldwide utilize a German donor. Jada received her successful transplant at seven months old and met Huber in New York City in January 2011.
Walking to Build the Registry Face-to-Face
Witnessing other hospitalized patients who failed to find a matching donor prompted Moore and her daughter, Issa, to establish the Jada Bascom Foundation as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Deer Park, Washington, in 2009. Rather than relying solely on digital outreach, Moore elected to travel on foot to register new participants directly. Her prior expeditions include a 15-month, 4,434-mile walk to Los Angeles and New York City in 2009, a 1,000-mile European walk in 2012, a Sonoran Desert crossing in 2020, and a 300-mile trek to Seattle Children’s Hospital in 2024.
During her current 356-mile route, Moore carries no support vehicle and wears a visible QR code enabling onlookers to register for the NMDP registry on the spot. Her lodging relies entirely on community hospitality, ranging from church lawns and homeless shelters to municipal hotel vouchers and stranger-offered guest rooms.
Understanding the Need for Bone Marrow Donors
According to NMDP statistics, a blood cancer diagnosis occurs every three to four minutes in the United States, with approximately 18,500 patients annually potentially benefiting from bone marrow or umbilical cord blood transplants. Because roughly 70% of patients lack a matching donor within their immediate families, they depend entirely on unrelated registry members who joined preemptively.
